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PRINCETON,  N.  J. 


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BL  262  .G7  1880 
Gray,  Asa,  1810-1888. 
Natural  science  and  religio 


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NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION 


TWO    LECTURES 


DELIVERED    TO   THE 


THEOLOGICAL   SCHOOL  OF  YALE   COLLEGE 


By  ASA   GRAY 


NEW     YORK 

CHARLES    SCRTBXER'S    SONS 

743  and  745  Broadway 

1880 


Copyright,  1880, 
By   Asa   Gkay. 


Cambridge  : 
University  Press  :  John  Wilson  &  Son. 


NATUKAL      SCIENCE     AND      KELIGION 


LECTURE    I.  —  SCIENTIFIC    BELIEFS. 

AM  invited  to  address  you  upon  the  rela- 
tions of  science  to  religion,  —  in  reference, 
as  I  suppose,  to  those  claims  of  natural  science 
which  have  been  thought  to  be  antagonistic  to 
supernatural  religion,  and  to  those  assumptions 
connected  with  the  Christian  faith  which  scien- 
tific men  in  our  day  are  disposed  to  question  or 
to  reject. 

While  listening  weekly— I  hope  with  edifi- 
cation —  to  the  sermons  which  it  is  my  privilege 
and  duty  to  hear,  it  has  now  and  then  occurred 
to  me  that  it  might  be  well  if  an  occasional  dis- 
course could  be  addressed  from  the  pews  to  the 
pulpit.  But,  until  your  invitation  reached  me, 
I  had  no  idea  that  I  should  ever  be  called  upon 
to  put  this  passing  thought  into  practice.  I  am 
sufficiently  convinced  already  that  the  members 


4  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

of  a  profession  know  their  own  calling  better 
than  any  one  else  can  know  it ;  and  in  respect 
to  the  debatable  land  which  lies  along  the  bor- 
ders of  theology  and  natural  science,  and  which 
has  been  harried  by  many  a  raid  from  both 
sides,  I  am  not  confident  that  I  can  be  helpful 
in  composing  strifes  or  in  the  fixing  of  bounda- 
ries; nor  that  you  will  agree  with  me  that  some 
of  the  encounters  were  inevitable,  and  some  of 
the  alarm  groundless.  Indeed  upon  much  that 
I  may  have  to  say,  I  expect  rather  the  chari- 
table judgment  than  the  full  assent  of  those 
whose  approbation  I  could  most  wish  to  win. 

But  I  take  it  for  granted  that  you  do  not 

wish  to  hear  an  echo  from  the  pulpit  nor  from 

the  theological  class-room.     You  ask  a  layman 

to  speak  from  this  desk  because  you  would  have 

a  layman's  thoughts,  expressed  from  a  layman's 

point  of  view ;  because  you  would  know  what 

a  naturalist   comes  to  think  upon  matters  of 

common  interest.     And  you  would  have  him 

liberate  his  mind  frankly,  unconventionally,  and 

with  as  little  as  may  be  of  the  technicalities  of 

our   several   professions.     Frankness   is  always 

commendable ;  but  outspokenness  upon  delicate 

and  unsettled  problems,  in  the  ground  of  which 

cherished  convictions  are  rooted,  ought  to  be 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  5 

tempered  with  consideration.  Now  I,  as  a  lay- 
man, may  claim  a  certain  license  in  this  regard ; 
and  any  over-free  handling  of  sensitive  themes 
should  compromise  no  one  but  myself. 

As  a  student  who  has  devoted  an  ordinary 
lifetime  to  one  branch  of  natural  history,  in 
which  he  is  supposed  to  have  accumulated  a  fair 
amount  of  particular  experience  and  to  have 
gained  a  general  acquaintance  with  scientific 
methods  and  aims,  —  as  one,  moreover,  who 
has  taken  kindly  to  the  new  turn  of  biological 
study  in  these  latter  years,  but  is  free  from  par- 
tisanship, —  I  am  asked  to  confer  with  other  and 
younger  students,  of  another  kind  of  science,  in 
respect  to  the  tendencies  of  certain  recently 
developed  doctrines,  which  in  schools  of  theology 
are  almost  everywhere  spoken  against,  but  which 
are  everywhere  permeating  the  lay  mind  — 
whether  for  good  or  for  evil  —  and  are  raising 
questions  more  or  less  perplexing  to  all  of  us. 

But  our  younger  and  middle-aged  men  must 
not  think  that  such  perplexities  and  antagonisms 
have  only  recently  begun.  Some  of  them  are 
very  old ;  some  are  old  questions  transferred  to 
new  ground,  in  which  they  spring  to  rankness 
of  growth,  or  sink  their  roots  till  they  touch 
deeper  issues  than  before,  —  issues  of  philosophy 


6  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION 

rather  than  of  science,  upon  which  the  momen- 
tous question  of  theism  or  non-theism  eventually 
turns.  Some  on  the  other  hand  are  mere  sur- 
vivals, now  troublesome  only  to  those  who  are 
holding  fast  to  theological  positions  which  the 
advance  of  actual  knowledge  has  rendered  un- 
tenable, but  which  they  do  not  well  know  how 
to  abandon ;  yet  which,  in  principle,  have  mostly 
been  abandoned  already. 

To  begin  with  trite  examples.  Among  the 
questions  which  disquieted  pious  souls  in  my 
younger  days,  but  which  have  ceased  to  disquiet 
any  of  us,  are  those  respecting  the  age  and 
gradual  development  of  the  earth  and  of  the 
solar  system,  which  came  in  with  geology  and 
modern  astronomy.  I  remember  the  time  when 
it  was  a  mooted  question  whether  geology  and 
orthodox  Christianity  were  compatible ;  and  I 
suppose  that  when,  in  these  quarters,  the  bal- 
ance inclined  to  the  affirmative,  it  was  owing 
quite  as  much  to  Professor  Silliman's  transpar- 
ent Christian  character  as  to  his  scientific  abil- 
ity. One  need  not  be  an  old  man  to  know  that 
Laplace  was  accounted  an  atheist  because  he 
developed  the  nebular  hypothesis,  and  because 
of  his  remark  that  he  had  no  need  to  postulate 
a  Creator  for  the  mathematical  discussion  of  a 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  J 

physical  theorem;  for  a  venerable  and  most 
religious  astronomer,  still  living,  who  adopted 
this  hypothesis  in  his  "Exposition  of  certain 
Harmonies  of  the  Solar  System/'  published  only 
five  years  ago,  thought  it  needful  to  add  an 
appendix,  asking  the  question,  "  Is  the  nebular 
hypothesis,  in  any  form,  essentially  atheistical  in 
its  character  ? "  He  answered  it  in  the  negative, 
but  with  the  salvo,  that  "  this  hypothesis,  having 
to  do  with  a  strictly  azoic  period,  enforces  no 
connection  with  'the  development  theory'  of 
the  beginning  or  of  the  progress  of  life." 

The  great  antiquity  of  the  habitable  world 
and  of  existing  races  was  the  next  question. 
It  gave  some  anxiety  fifty  years  ago ;  but 
is  now,  I  suppose,  generally  acquiesced  in,  —  in 
the  sense  that  existing  species  of  plants  and 
animals  have  been  in  existence  for  many  thou- 
sands of  years ;  and,  as  to  their  associate,  man, 
all  agree  that  the  length  of  his  occupation  is  not 
at  all  measured  by  the  generations  of  the  bibli- 
cal chronology,  and  are  awaiting  the  result  of 
an  open  discussion  as  to  whether  the  earliest 
known  traces  of  his  presence  are  in  quaternary 
or  in  the  latest  tertiary  deposits. 

As  connected  with  this  class  of  questions, 
many  of  us  remember  the  time  when  schemes 


8  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

for  reconciling  Genesis  with  Geology  had  an 
importance  in  the  churches,  and  among  thought- 
ful people,  which  few  if  any  would  now  assign 
to  them ;  when  it  was  thought  necessary  —  for 
only  necessity  could  justify  it  —  to  bring  the 
details  of  the  two  into  agreement  by  extraneous 
suppositions  and  forced  constructions  of  lan- 
guage, such  as  would  now  offend  our  critical  and 
sometimes  our  moral  sense.  The  change  of  view 
which  we  have  witnessed  amounts  to  this.  Our 
predecessors  implicitly  held  that  Holy  Scripture 
must  somehow  truly  teach  such  natural  science 
as  it  had  occasion  to  refer  to,  or  at  least  could 
never  contradict  it ;  while  the  most  that  is  now 
intelligently  claimed  is,  that  the  teachings  of 
the  two,  properly  understood,  are  not  incompati- 
ble. We  may  take  it  to  be  the  accepted  idea 
that  the  Mosaic  books  were  not  handed  down  to 
us  for  our  instruction  in  scientific  knowledge, 
and  that  it  is  our  duty  to  ground  our  scientific 
beliefs  upon  observation  and  inference,  unmixed 
with  considerations  of  a  different  order.  Then, 
when  fundamental  principles  of  the  cosmogony 
in  Genesis  are  found  to  coincide  with  established 
facts  and  probable  inferences,  the  coincidence 
has  its  value  ;  and  wherever  the  particulars  are 
incongruous,  the  discrepancy  does  not  distress  us, 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  9 

I  may  add,  does  not  concern  us.  I  trust  that 
the  veneration  rightly  due  to  the  Old  Testament 
is  not  impaired  by  the  ascertaining  that  the 
Mosaic  is  not  an  original  but  a  compiled  cos- 
mogony. Its  glory  is,  that  while  its  materials 
were  the  earlier  property  of  the  race,  they  were 
in  this  record  purged  of  polytheism  and  Nature- 
worship,  and  impregnated  with  ideas  which  we 
suppose  the  world  will  never x  outgrow.  For  its 
fundamental  note  is,  the  declaration  of  one  God, 
maker  of  heaven  and  earth,  and  of  all  things, 
visible  and  invisible,  —  a  declaration  which,  if 
physical  science  is  unable  Jo  establish,  it  is 
equally  unable  to  overthrow. 

But,  leaving  aside  for  the  present  all  ques- 
tions of  this  sort,  I  proceed  with  the  proper 
subject  of  this  discourse ;  namely,  the  further 
changes  in  scientific  belief,  which  have  occurred 
within  my  own  recollection,  even  since  the  time 
when  I  first  aspired  to  authorship,  now  forty- 
five  years  ago. 

There  will  be  no  need  to  go  much  beyond 
the  line  of  subjects  which  it  has  been  my  busi- 
ness to  study,  in  order  to  bring  before  you,  in  a 
cursory  review,  not  indeed  all  the  disturbing 
topics  of  the  time,  but  quite  enough  of  them 
for  our  purpose.      For  the  changes  which  we 


10  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

have  to  consider  are  all  more  or  less  connected 
with  the  evolutionary  theories  which  are  now 
uppermost  in  the  popular  mind.  In  this  pres- 
entation, it  is  best  to  set  them  forth  in  their 
simplest  or  most  general  form,  divested  of  all 
theological  or  philosophical  considerations,  which 
have  been  or  may  be  attached  to  them.  I 
should  rather  say,  to  some  of  them.  For  the 
foundations,  or  at  least  the  buttresses,  of  the 
now  prevalent  doctrine  of  the  derivative  origin 
of  species  mainly  rest  upon  researches  inde- 
pendently made,  without  speculative  bias,  being 
the  general  contributions  to  biological  science 
in  this  century ;  the  results  of  which  have  been 
accepted  as  far  as  made  out  without  apprehen- 
sion or  other  than  scientific  controversy. 

Upon  no  one  of  these  particular  points  has 
there  been  a  completer  change  of  view  than 
upon  the  distinctness  of  the  animal  and  vege- 
table kingdoms.  The  former  conviction  that 
these  two  kingdoms  were  wholly  different  in 
structure,  in  function,  and  in  kind  of  life,  was 
not  seriously  disturbed  by  the  difficulties  which 
the  naturalist  encountered  when  he  undertook 
to  define  them.  It  was  always  understood  that 
plants  and  animals,  though  completely  contrasted 
in  their  higher  representatives,  approached  each 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  H 

other  very  closely  in  their  lower  and  simpler 
forms.  But  they  were  believed  not  to  blend. 
It  was  implicitly  supposed  that  every  living 
thing  was  distinctively  plant  or  animal  ;  that 
there  were  real  and  profound  differences  be- 
tween the  two,  if  only  they  could  be  seized  ; 
and  that  increased  powers  of  investigation  — 
microscopical  and  chemical  —  might  be  expected 
to  discover  them.  This  expectation  has  not 
been  fulfilled.  It  is  true  that  the  ambiguities 
of  a  hundred  years  ago  are  settled  now.  The 
zoophytes  are  all  remanded  to  their  proper 
places,  though  the  animal  kingdom  at  first 
claimed  more  than  belonged  to  it.  But  other, 
more  recondite  and  insurmountable,  difficulties 
arose  in  their  place.  The  best,  I  am  disposed 
to  say  the  settled,  opinion  now  is,  that  there 
are  multitudinous  forms  which  are  not  suffi- 
ciently differentiated  to  be  distinctively  either 
plant  or  animal,  while,  as  respects  ordinary 
plants  and  animals,  the  difficulty  of  laying 
down  a  definition  has  become  far  greater  than 
ever  before.  In  short,  the  animal  and  vege- 
table lines,  diverging  widely  above,  join  below 
in  a  loop.  Naturalists  may  help  classification, 
but  do  not  alter  these  facts,  when  they  sever 
this  loop  arbitrarily  at  what   they   deem   the 


12  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

lowest  point,  or  when  they  cut  away  the  whole 
loop,  and  form  of  it  a  separate  kingdom  —  the 
Protista  of  Haeckel.  The  only  objection  to  the 
latter  is  that  the  definition  of  this  tedium  quid 
from  plant  on  the  one  hand  and  animal  on  the 
other  is  equally  impracticable.  One  difficulty 
is  removed  only  to  have  two  in  its  place.  The 
fact  is,  that  a  new  article  has  recently  been 
added  to  the  scientific  creed,  —  the  essential 
oneness  of  the  two  kingdoms  of  organic  nature. 
I  crave  your  patience  while  I  enter  somewhat 
into  particulars. 

Not  many  years  ago  it  was  taught  that  plants 
and  animals  were  composed  of  different  mate- 
rials :  plants,  of  a  chemical  substance  of  three 
elements, —  carbon,  hydrogen,  and  oxygen  ;  ani- 
mals of  one  of  four  elements,  nitrogen  being 
added  to  the  other  three.  The  plant  substance, 
named  cellulose,  because  it  formed  the  cell-walls, 
was  supposed  to  constitute  the  whole  vegetable 
fabric.  It  was  known  that  all  plants  produced 
nitrogenous  matter  in  the  form  of  a  compound 
of  four  elements ;  but  this  was  thought  to  be 
merely  a  contained  product,  in  a  structureless 
condition,  and  to  be  not  so  much  essential  to 
the  plant's  life  as  to  that  of  the  animals  which 
the  plants  nourished.    It  was  known  to  be  struc- 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  13 

ture-building  material  for  animals  :  it  was  not 
known  to  be  essential  plant-structure  also.  But 
it  was  soon  ascertained  that  this  quaternary 
matter  of  the  animal  body  was  chemically  the 
same  in  the  plant,  was  elaborated  there,  and 
only  appropriated  by  the  animal.  Next  it  was 
found  that  it  was  physiologically  and  struc- 
turally the  same  in  the  plant,  that  it  was  the 
living  part  of  the  plant,  that  which  manifested 
the  life  and  did  the  work  in  vegetable  as  well 
as  in  animal  organisms.  This  substance,  which 
is  manifold  in  its  forms  and  protean  in  its  trans- 
formations, has,  in  its  state  of  living  matter,  one 
physiological  name  which  has  become  familiar, 
that  of  protoplasm.  The  statement  that  "  proto- 
plasm is  the  physical  basis  of  life  "  must  be 
accepted  as  true.  As  Professor  Allman  puts  it, 
"  wherever  there  is  life,  from  its  lowest  to  its 
highest  manifestations,  there  is  protoplasm  ; 
wherever  there  is  protoplasm,  there  too  is  life,1' 
or  has  been.  The  cellulose  or  solid  material 
which  composes  the  bulk  of  a  tree  or  herb  did 
not  produce  the  protoplasm  contained  in  its 
living  parts,  as  was  formerly  supposed,  but  the 
protoplasm  produced  the  cellulose :  the  semi- 
liquid  and  mobile  matter  within  produced  the 
cell- walls  which  enclose  it.     The  walls  or  solid 


14  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

parts  are  to  the  protoplasm  what  the  shell  is  to 
the  oyster.  The  contents  not  only  preceded 
the  protective  investment,  but  can  exist  and 
prosper  apart  from  it,  as  many  a  mollusk  does, 
as  many  a  simple  plant  does  throughout  the 
earlier  and  most  active  period  of  its  life.  In- 
deed this  slimy  matter  lives  before  and  apart 
from  any  thing  which  can  be  called  a  living 
being.  A' formless,  apparently  diffluent  and 
structureless  mass  is  seen  to  exhibit  the  essen- 
tial phenomena  of  life,  —  to  move,  to  feed,  to 
grow,  to  multiply.  We  have  spoken  of  beings 
so  low  in  the  scale  that  the  individuals  through- 
out their  whole  existence  are  not  sufficiently 
specialized  to  be  distinctively  plant  or  animal : 
yet  these  are  definite  in  form  and  fixed  in 
phase,  are  individual  beings,  though  we  may 
not  determine  to  which  kingdom  they  belong. 
But  there  is  life  in  simpler  shape, 

"  If  shape  it  might  be  called  that  shape  has  none, 
Distinguishable  in  member,  joint,  or  limb," 

there  is  vital  activity  in  that  which  has  not 
attained  even  the  semblance  of  individuality. 
Little  lumps  of  protoplasm  are  these,  with  out- 
line in  a  state  of  perpetual  change,  divisible 
into  two  or  three  or  more,  or  two  or  three  com- 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  15 

billing  into  one  mass,  either  way  without  hin- 
dering or  altering  their  manifestations.  This 
living  matter  —  of  which  Bathybius,  if  there  be 
a  Bathybius,  or  if  it  be  any  thing  more  than  pro- 
toplasm of  sponges,  is  one  example  —  is  said  to 
have  nothing  more  than  molecular  structure. 
It  would  be  safer  to  say  that  the  microscope 
has  as  yet  revealed  no  organic  structure. 

The  natural  history  of  protoplasm  has  re- 
cently been  well  expounded  by  Professor  All- 
man,  late  President  of  the  British  Association, 
a  most  judicious  naturalist,  of  conservative 
tendency;  and  his  address,  which  you  have 
read  or  should  read,  saves  me  from  further  de- 
tails, and  enables  me  to  proceed  to  other  evi- 
dences of  the  substantial  oneness  of  the  two 
kingdoms  of  organic  nature. 

Cellulose  makes  up  the  bulk  of  a  vegetable, 
and  was  thought  to  be  its  true  element.  But  it 
is  now  known  to  be  not  even  peculiar  to  it :  it 
enters  largely  into  the  fabric  of  certain  ani- 
mals, not  of  the  very  lowest  grade.  Starch 
was  equally  regarded  as  a  purely  and  charac- 
teristically vegetable  production ;  and  its  pres- 
ence, in  ambiguous  cases,  has  been  taken  as  a 
test.  But  it  follows  the  example  of  cellulose. 
Being  a  prepared  material  from  which  cellulose 


16  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

in  the  plant  is  made  by  a  molecular  change, 
we  are  not  now  surprised  to  learn  that  starch- 
grains  of  animal  origin  have  been  found.  We 
cannot  conceive  any  thing  more  characteristic 
of  a  vegetable  than  chlorophyll,  the  green  of 
herbage  ;  for  in  it  the  special  work  of  the  plant 
is  done,  —  namely,  the  transformation  of  mine- 
ral matter  into  organic,  under  the  light  of  the 
sun,  this  being  the  prerogative  of  vegetation. 
Now,  not  only  does  chlorophyll  abound  in  many 
ambiguous  microscopical  organisms  of  fresh  and 
salt  water,  which  except  for  this  would  be  taken 
for  animals,  but  it  has  recently  been  detected  in 
hydras  and  sea-anemones  and  planarias,  which 
are  as  certainly  animals  as  are  oysters  and 
clams.  Nor  can  it  be  thought  that  they  possess 
something  merely  resembling  chlorophyll ;  for 
it  performs  the  characteristic  work  of  that  pe- 
culiar substance,  which,  as  I  have  said,  is  the 
characteristic  work  of  vegetation.  For  the 
index  and  essential  accompaniment  of  this 
work  (t.  e.,  of  the  conversion  of  mineral  into 
organic  matter)  is  the  evolution  of  oxygen  gas 
from  the  decomposition  of  carbonic  acid,  water, 
&c,  in  which,  if  in  any  thing,  vegetation  con- 
sists. Now,  the  proof  that  what  these  animals 
possess    is    chlorophyll    itself  is    demonstrated 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  17 

by  their  performance  of  the  same  function. 
They  decompose  carbonic  acid  and  evolve  oxy- 
gen gas,  just  as  a  green  leaf  does.  Moreover, 
the  chlorophyll  has  been  extracted  and  identi- 
fied by  the  spectroscopic  test.  Here,  then, 
animals,  undoubted  animals,  in  addition  to  their 
own  proper  functions,  take  on  the  essential  func- 
tion of  plants.  There  is  no  avoiding  the  con- 
clusion that  such  animals  are  doing  the  duty 
of  vegetables. 

Although  I  make  little  account  of  it,  I  should 
not  overlook  a  more  empirical  distinction  be- 
tween the  two  kingdoms  which  has  also  failed. 
The  characteristic  features  of  an  animal  were 
mouth  and  stomach.  This  is  the  normal  cor- 
relation of  an  animal  with  its  conditions.  Hav- 
ing to  feed  on  vegetable  matter,  or  what  has  been 
vegetable  matter,  in  solid  as  well  as  liquid  form, 
a  mouth  opening  into  an  internal  cavity  of 
some  sort  was  the  natural  pattern,  to  which 
all  animals  were  supposed  to  conform.  But 
Nature,  with  all  her  fondness  for  patterns,  will 
not  be  arbitrarily  held  to  them.  Entozoa  feed 
like  rhizophytes;  and  turbellarias  and  their 
relatives  have  no  alimentary  canal,  —  the  food 
taken  by  what  answers  to  mouth  passing  as 
directly  into   the   general   tissue   as  does  the 


18  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

material  which  a  parasitic  root  imbibes  from  its 
host,  or  an  ordinary  root  from  the  soil. 

While  animals  are  thus  overpassing  the 
oundary  in  one  direction,  vegetables  are  mak- 
ing reprisals  on  the  other.  The  rule  is,  that 
vegetables  create  organic  matter,  and  animals 
consume  it,  producing  none.  But,  while  some 
animals  produce  some  organic  matter,  some 
plants  even  among  those  of  the  highest  grade 
feed  wholly  upon  other  plants,  or  even  upon 
animals  or  their  products.  Like  animals,  some 
are  herbivorous  and  some  are  carnivorous. 
That  certain  plants  live  parasitically  upon 
other  plants  or  upon  animals,  has  long  been  too 
familiar  to  be  remarkable.  But  that  plants  of 
the  highest  grade  could  capture  or  in  some  way 
take  possession  of  small  animals,  extract  and 
feed  upon  their  juices,  and  appropriate  these 
as  nourishment,  is  essentially  a  recent  wonder 
and  a  recently  ascertained  fact.  Yet  some  of 
the  facts  which  point  to  this  conclusion  are  old 
enough;  and  the  conclusion  would  probably 
have  been  reached  years  ago,  except  for  the 
preconception  that  plants  and  animals  were  too 
distinct  for  interchange  of  functions.  Now  that 
we  know  they  are  not,  and  that  the  living 
structure  in  the  two   is  fundamentally  identi- 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  19 

cal,  what  were  formerly  regarded  as  freaks  of 
Nature  are  no  longer  mere  wonderments,  but 
parts  of  a  system,  and  capable  of  being  cor- 
related with  the  rest  by  investigation.  And 
investigation  soon  ascertained  that  this  carnivo- 
rous attachment  to  the  vegetable  organism  in 
Dioncea  and  Drosera  was  an  organ  for  digesting 
as  well  as  capturing  animal  food.  Juices  are 
imbibed  by  it  directly,  as  in  animals  from  the 
stomach  ;  and  nourishing  solid  parts  are  ren- 
dered soluble  and  assimilable  by  imbuing  them 
with  peptones  or  digestive  ferments,  analogous 
in  composition  and  in  action  to  the  gastric  juice 
of  the  higher  animals. 

Perhaps  nothing  in  Nature  can  be  more  won- 
derful than  all  this ;  and  nothing  is  more  char- 
acteristic of  the  change  which  has  come  over 
scientific  mind  in  our  day  than  the  manner  in 
which  such  a  discovery  is  received.  The  lead- 
ing facts  were  well  known  a  hundred  years  ago, 
and  more.  But,  until  recently,  these  phenomena 
were  regarded  as  altogether  anomalous ;  and 
such  anomalies  appear  to  have  troubled  no- 
body, except  the  framers  of  definitions.  "  Zusus 
naturce  "  was  a  convenient  phrase,  and  stood  in 
the  place  of  explanation,  —  as  if  the  play  of 
Nature   was   something  apart  from   her  work. 


J 


20  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

No  one  seems   to    have  had  any  difficulty  in 
believing  that  a  few  particular  plants  were   en- 
dowed with  faculties  of  which  no  other  plants 
were  sharers.     The  thoughtful  naturalist  of  our 
day  is  in  a  different  frame  of  mind.      He   ex- 
pects to  find  that  the  extraordinary  is  only  an 
extreme  case  of  the  ordinary ;  and  he  looks  for 
instances  leading  up  from  the  one  to  the  other. 
I  cannot  tarry  to  explain  how  this  expectation 
has  directed  observation  and  stimulated  research 
in  this  particular  field,  and  reached  the  result 
that   these  wonderful  plants  are   distinguished 
only   by  higher  degrees  and  more  prominent 
manifestations  of  a  power  which  is  in  some  sort 
common  to  many  or  to  all  their  brethren.     We 
learn,  even,  that  the  germinating  embryo  of  a 
grain  of  corn  feeds  upon  and  digests  the  solid 
maternal  nourishment  which  surrounds  it,  and 
the  humblest   mould  appropriates  the  organic 
matter  which  it  attacks,  by  the  aid  of  a  peptone 
or  inversive  ferment,  not  different  in  nature  and 
office  from  the  gastric  and  other  juices  by  aid  of 
which  we  appropriate  our  daily  meals. 

It  does  appear  also  that  the  lowest  organ- 
isms, which  live  a  kind  of  scavenger  life,  by 
using  over  again  dead  or  effete  organic  matter 
running  to  decay  —  but  to  some  of  which  living 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  21 

juices  come  not  amiss  —  have  also  the  power, 
certain  salts  being   given,  of  creating    organic 
matter,  and  building  up  a  fabric  without  sun- 
light and  without  chlorophyll.     Here,  then,  is 
the  simplest  organic  life,  —  in  which,  germs  be-  \ 
ing  given,  i,  e.  first  individuals  of  the  sort  sup- 
plied   and    placed    in    favorable    surroundings, 
they  increase  and  multiply  into  more,  each  to 
multiply  again,  and  so  on,  in  geometrical  pro- 
gression.    From  such  lowly  basis  the  two  king- 
doms may  be   conceived  to  rise,  diverging  as 
they  ascend  in  separate  lines,  —  the  one  devel- 
oping close  relations  with  sunlight  and  becom- 
ing  the  food-producing  vegetable  realm ;    the 
other,  the  food-consuming  animal  realm,  which, 
dispensed  from  the  labor  of  assimilation,  and 
from  the  fixity  of  position  which  generally  at- 
tends it,  may  rise  to  higher  and  freer  mani- 
festations of  life.     Such,  at  least,  appear  to  be 
the   relations    of    the    two    kingdoms   to    each 
other   and    to   their  common   base  ;    and  such 
is  the  conception  through  which  we  may  attain 
to  an  explanation  of  how  it  may  be  that  mem- 
bers of  each  line  possess  so  many  characteristics 
of  the  other. 

I  have  said,  "  germs  being  given,"  the  forms 
increase  and  multiply.     If  asked,  Whence  the 


22  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

germs,  and  were  they  everywhere  and  always 
prerequisite  ?  the  scientific  answer  must  be  yes, 
so  far  as  we  know.  Thus  far,  spontaneous 
generation,  or  abiogenesis,  —  the  incoming  of 
life  apart  from  that  which  is  living,  —  is  not 
supported  by  any  unequivocal  evidence,  though 
not  a  little  may  be  said  in  its  favor.  However 
it  may  be  in  the  future,  here  scientific  belief 
stands  mainly  where  it  did  forty-five  years  ago, 
only  on  a  better-tried  and  firmer  footing. 

It  remains  to  mention  two  supposed  distinc- 
tions between  vegetables  and  animals  which 
were  until  recently  prominent,  but  which  are 
no  longer  criteria,  even  as  between  the  higher 
forms  of  the  two. 

The  first  is  the  faculty  of  automatic  move- 
ment, or  —  to  take  up  the  question  only  on 
the  highest  plane  —  the  faculty  of  making 
movements  in  reference  to  ends.  This  is 
affirmed  of  animals,  and  is  an  undoubted  faculty 
of  all  of  them,  but  was  long  denied  to  plants, 
perhaps  from  a  notion  that  such  movements 
argued  consciousness.  But  consciousness,  in 
any  legitimate  sense  of  the  term,  pertains  only 
to  the  higher  animals.  To  show  the  breaking 
down  of  the  distinction,  it  would  suffice  to  con- 
trast the  rooted  fixity  and  vegetative  growth  of 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  23 

very  many  lower  animals  with  the  free  loco- 
motion of  most  microscopic  aquatic  plants  and 
of  the  germs  of  those  not  microscopic  ;  but 
plants  of  the  highest  organization  furnish  ob- 
vious examples  better  suited  to  our  purpose. 
Is  there  not  an  independent  movement,  in  re- 
sponse to  an  external  impression,  and  in  refer- 
ence to  an  end,  when  the  two  sides  of  the  trap 
of  Dionwa  suddenly  enclose  an  alighted  fly, 
cross  their  fringe  of  marginal  bristles  over  the 
only  avenue  of  escape,  remain  quiescent  in  this 
position  long  enough  to  give  a  small  fly  full 
opportunity  to  crawl  out,  soon  open  if  this  hap- 
pens, but  after  due  interval  shut  down  firmly 
upon  one  of  greater  size  which  cannot  get  out, 
then  pour  out  digestive  juices,  and  in  due  time 
re-absorb  the  whole  ?  So,  when  the  free  end  of 
a  twining  stem,  or  the  whole  length  of  a  ten- 
dril, outreaches  horizontally  and  makes  circular 
sweeps,  and  secures  thereby  a  support,  to  which 
it  clings  by  coiling;  when  a  tendril,  having 
fixed  its  tip  to  a  distant  support,  shortens  itself 
by  coiling,  so  bringing  the  next  tendril  nearer 
the  support ;  when  a  free  revolving  tendril 
avoids  winding  up  itself  uselessly  around  the 
stem  it  belongs  to,  and  m  the  only  practicable 
way,  namely,  by  changing  from  the  horizontal 


24  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

to  the  vertical  position  until  it  passes  by  it, 
and  then  rapidly  resumes  its  horizontal  sweep, 
to  result  in  reaching  a  distant  support, — is  it  pos- 
sible to  think  that  these  are  not  movements  in 
reference  to  ends  ?  You  may  say  that  all  such 
movements  are  capable  of  explanation,  or  in 
time  will  be  so ;  are  the  result  of  mechanism, 
and  adjustments,  and  of  common  physical  forces. 
No  doubt;  and  this  is  equally  true  of  every 
animal  movement,  not  excepting  those  insti- 
gated by  volition.  "  Still  it  moves,"  as  the 
humbled  Galileo  said  of  the  earth ;  and  the 
idea  that  such  movements  are  in  reference  to 
ends  is  not  superseded  by  any  yet  devised  ex- 
v— planation  of  the  mechanism. 

A  remaining  distinction  between  plants  and 
animals  was  based  on  the  relations  they  respec- 
tively sustain  to  the  air  we  breathe.  This  has 
already  been  stated,  and  the  exceptions  noted  ; 
but  the  topic  is  resumed  in  order  to  bring  to 
view  the  substantially  different  relations  of  the 
two  kingdoms  to  physical  force. 

Plants  give  out  oxygen  gas,  and  thus  purify 
the  air  for  the  respiration  of  animals.  Animals, 
consuming  this  oxygen,  breathe  it  back  to  the  air 
in  the  form  of  carbonic  acid.  But  the  putting  of 
this  contrast  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  25 

plants  produce  organic  matter  and  animals  de- 
compose it.  The  oxygen  gas  given  out  by  sun- 
lit foliage  is  just  what  is  left  over  when  carbonic 
acid  is  decomposed  and  the  carbon  enters  into 
the  composition  of  the  vegetable  matter  then 
produced.  This  elaborated  matter,  more  com- 
plex and  unstable  than  the  materials  of  which 
it  was  made,  is  the  food  of  animals,  is  first  ap- 
propriated, then  decomposed  by  them,  and  in  the 
decomposition  the  carbon  is  given  back  to  the 
air  recombined  with  the  oxygen  they  inhale, 
the  carbon  again  taking  the  oxygen  which  was 
separated  from  it  by  the  plant.  So  respiration 
means  decomposition ;  and  this  decomposition 
in  the  animal  economy  means  organic  material 
used  up,  work  done,  energy  degraded.  It  means 
that  the  clock-weight  which  was  wound  up  by 
the  sun  in  the  plant  has  run  down.  It  means 
that,  very  much  as  the  sun,  shining  on  the  earth 
and  ocean,  converts  water  into  vapor  and  lifts  it 
into  the  upper  air,  so  the  same  luminary,  shining 
upon  the  plant,  there  raises  mineral  matter  to  a 
higher  and  unstable  state,  in  what  we  call  organic 
products,  —  in  both  cases  endowing  the  affected 
matter  with  a  certain  energy.  The  exalted 
matter  in  the  one  case  falls  at  length  as  rain, 
perhaps  directly  into  the  ocean  from  which  it 


26  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

was  lifted,  perhaps  upon  a  mountain  summit, 
where  as  snow  or  glacier-ice  it  may  long  remain 
poised  and  comparatively  stationary.  But  sooner 
or  later  it  falls  into  the  rivulet  and  the  river, 
and  in  its  fall  and  flow  it  expends  its  endow- 
ment of  energy,  and  does  ivorJc,  —  turns  wheels 
and  spins  or  forges,  if  man  so  directs,  —  and, 
when  it  has  reached  stable  equilibrium  at  the 
level  of  the  ocean,  it  will  have  expended  just 
the  energy  which  was  imparted  to  it  in  the  rais- 
ing. So  the  energy  with  which  the  sun  endowed 
vegetable  matter  when  it  was  raised  to  the  or- 
ganic state  may  be  given  up  as  heat  when  this 
matter  is  restored  to  its  original  condition  by 
burning,  or  falls  slowly  back  to  the  same  con- 
dition in  the  process  of  natural  decay ;  or  the 
heat,  like  the  falling  water,  may  do  mechanical 
work. 

But  also  the  organic  material  may  be  con- 
sumed in  the  plant  itself.  For  the  plant,  like 
the  animal,  is  a  consumer.  The  only  difference 
is  that,  whereas  the  animal  is  always  and  only 
a  consumer  and  decomposer,  the  plant  creates 
or  composes  likewise,  and  it  produces  vastly 
more  than  it  consumes  or  decomposes.  It  de- 
composes only  when  it  does  mechanical  work. 
But  all  its  processes,  all  movements;  all  trans- 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  27 

formations,  are  work  done  at  the  expense  of 
organized  material  and  accumulated  energy. 
Even  the  act  of  storing  up  solar  force  in  the 
green  herbage,  or  rather  the  changes  connected 
with  it,  can  only  be  done  at  a  certain  cost, 
though  the  cost  is  small  in  comparison  with  the 
gain.  But  every  transference  of  material  from 
one  place  or  one  state  to  another  is  done  only 
by  the  decomposition  and  loss  of  some  portion 
of  it,  —  one  part  suffering  that  another  may  be 
changed  and  saved.  When  the  germ  feeds 
upon  the  maternal  store  in  the  seed,  a  consid- 
erable part  is  consumed  in  order  to  make  the 
rest  available ;  and  the  loss  is  made  manifest, 
just  as  in  the  breathing  of  an  animal  or  in  the 
combustion  of  fuel,  by  the  evolution  of  carbonic 
acid  and  of  heat.  The  same  thing  in  its  measure 
occurs  in  the  upbuilding  of  the  fabric,  the  car- 
rying of  material  high  into  the  air,  —  into  a 
tree-top,  for  instance  ;  and  in  all  the  processes 
of  flowering,  and  in  storing  up  in  the  seed  the 
richest  products  as  an  outfit  for  a  new  genera- 
tion. Where  visible  movements  take  place,  the 
quicker  action  is  at  equivalent  cost.  The  sen- 
sitive tendril,  which  will  coil  promptly  after  the 
first  brushing  with  my  finger,  will  coil  again 
only  after  an  interval   of  rest,  and  upon  the 


28  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

third  or  fourth  excitation,  or  after  a  certain 
number  of  spontaneous  revolutions,  it  falls  ex- 
hausted. 

But  material  endowed  with  energy  in  the 
plant  is  largely  transferred  as  food  to  animals. 
It  brings  to  them  an  energy  which  they  may 
use,  but  did  not  originate. 

Not  many  years  ago,  it  was  taken  for  granted 
that  living  things  moved  and  had  their  being, 
and  did  their  work,  by  strength  of  their  own ; 
that  the  power  by  which  I  strike  a  blow,  or 
write  on  my  paper,  or  move  my  lips  in  articu- 
late speech,  was  somehow  an  original  contribu- 
tion to,  rather  than  a  directed  use  of,  the 
common  forces  of  physical  nature.  To  all  who 
have  familiarized  themselves  with  the  facts  of 
the  case,  the  contrary  is  now  substantially  cer- 
tain. The  sun  is  the  source  of  all  motion  and 
force  manifested  in  life  on  the  earth,  and  plants 
are  the  medium  in  which  energy  is  exalted  to  the 
most  serviceable  state.  The  work  clone  by  liv- 
ing beings  is  at  the  expense  of,  and  is  measured 
by,  the  passage  of  so  much  matter  from  an  un- 
stable to  a  relatively  stable  equilibrium,  by  the 
coming  together  of  molecules  into  closer  and 
firmer  positions,  and  by  the  attendant  fall  of  so 
much  energy  from  an  exalted  to  a  relatively 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  29 

degraded  condition.  So  plants,  animals,  men, 
in  all  their  doings,  add  nothing  to  and  take 
nothing  from  the  sum  of  physical  force.  Their 
prerogative  is,  each  in  its  measure,  to  direct 
the  application  of  physical  force,  and  to  direct 
it  to  ends. 

The  idea  of  ends  involves  that  of  individuality. 

The  higher  animals,  and  men  among  them, 
are  complete  individuals.  We  cannot  make  the 
idea  of  individuality  any  clearer  than  by  adduc- 
ing them  as  examples  of  it.  In  the  lowest  form 
of  life,  in  those  amorphous  or  indefinitely  poly- 
morphous "  little  lumps  of  protoplasm  "  which 
the  biologists  have  made  known  to  us,  and  even, 
perhaps,  in  a  stratum  or  mass  which  takes  the 
form  of  whatever  bounds  it,  it  is  said  that  we 
may  contemplate  the  phenomena  of  life  in  that 
which  has  no  manifest  individuality.  What 
have  we  between  these  two  extremes? 

The  first  and  simplest  individuality  is  that  of 
cells.  Cell-doctrine,  or  the  cellular  composition 
of  plants  and  animals,  belongs  wholly  to  the 
biological  science  of  the  last  half-century,  al- 
though the  name  is  older,  and  some  knowledge 
of  the  structure  in  plants  is  as  old  as  the  micro- 
scope.   The  homologizing  of  animals  with  plants 


30  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

in  this  regard  began  about  forty  years  ago ;  and 
the  doctrine  of  the  individual  life  of  cells  is  re- 
cent. Unfortunately  the  rather  inappropriate 
name  cell  came  into  use  before  the  structure 
was  rightly  understood,  and  may  be  misleading. 
It  was  given,  naturally  enough,  to  the  walls  cir- 
cumscribing cavities  in  ordinary  plant-tissue, 
before  it  was  understood  that  the  walls  were 
not  made  and  then  filled,  —  before  it  was  known 
that  the  contents  are  the  living  thing,  and  the 
wall  an  encasement  or  shell. 

The  substance  of  our  recent  knowledge  is, 
that  a  plant  is  an  aggregate  of  organic  units, 
mostly  of  very  small  size ;  that  these  are  to  the 
herb  or  tree  what  the  bricks  and  stones  of  this 
chapel  are  to  the  edifice.  Only  they  "  are  living 
stones,  fitly  framed  together  "  in  organic  growth, 
and  their  walls  answer  to  the  cement.  Animals 
do  not  differ  materially,  except  that  the  mortar 
is  mostly  of  the  same  nature  as  the  bricks,  and 
there  is  a  greater  or  at  length  complete  fusion 
or  confluence  of  the  cells.  The  component  mate- 
rial, the  protoplasm,  is  essentially  the  same,  as 
has  already  been  stated. 

But  each  aggregate,  each  ordinary  plant  or 
animal,  begins  as  one  cell,  which  is  then  the  sim- 
ple individual.     This  in  growth  and  propagation 


;M 


)       ^ 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  31 

divides  itself  into  two,  these  two  into  four,  these 
into  sixteen,  and  so  on,  thus  building  up  the 
structure,  —  a  whole,  of  which  the  individual 
cells  are  component  parts.  The  simplest  plant 
begins  in  the  same  way  with  an  initial  cell,  but 
this,  instead  of  multiplying  with  cohesion  into 
a  structure,  multiplies  with  separation  into  pro- 
geny. Other  simple  plants  go  on  without  sep- 
aration to  form  a  row  of  similar  cells,  which 
may  casually  fall  apart  into  individuals  or  may 
remain  connected ;  but  in  either  case  each  has 
its  own  life,  and  does  what  the  others  do,  so  that 
the  separation  or  the  continued  connection  is  a 
matter  of  indifference.  But  when,  higher  in  the 
scale,  structures  are  built  up,  what  were  indi- 
viduals become  parts  or  organs,  or  the  thou- 
sandth or  millionth  part  of  an  organ ;  then  the 
life  of  the  cells  is  their  own  no  less,  but  their 
individuality  blends  in  the  common  life  of  the 
aggregate.  By  increasing  complexity  of  or- 
ganization, with  increasing  subordination  of 
parts  and  specialization  of  office,  the  highest 
plants  and  animals  are  composed.  In  them  each 
unit  or  cell  has  its  own  life  and  its  own  nutri- 
tion, while  also  contributing  to  the  common 
weal,  —  some  by  this  function,  some  by  that ;  but 
in  the  higher  forms  all  are  somehow  controlled 


32  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

by  a  pervasive  life  and  directed  to  common 
ends,  —  ends  the  more  various,  complex,  and 
special,  in  proportion  to  the  rank  of  the  organ- 
ism in  the  scale  of  being.  So,  too,  the  compo- 
nent cells  become  effete  and  die,  while  the 
aggregate  life  continues;  and  the  continued 
structure,  which  is  nothing  but  an  aggregate, 
is  somehow  informed,  animated,  and  operated 
by  a  common  life  of  higher  grade  than  that  of 
any  or  all  its  components. 

In  numerous  lower  plants  and  animals  we 
cannot  definitely  determine  what  are  organisms 
and  what  are  organs ;  in  the  herb  or  tree,  and 
in  the  coral  polypidom,  organ,  individual,  colony 
are  inextricably  blended ;  in  the  higher  animals 
subordination  of  parts  to  a  whole  is  completely 
attained.  All  along  the  ascent  that  which  con- 
trols and  subordinates  parts  aggrandizes  its  man- 
ifestations. The  lowest  animals  add  very  little 
to  merely  vegetative  life,  except  greater  sensi- 
tiveness to  external  impressions  and  more  free 
and  varied  response ;  a  step  higher  brings  in  a 
greater  range  of  unconscious  feeling ;  the  higher 
brute  animals  have  attained  unto  specific  desires, 
affections,  imagination,  and  the  elements  of 
simple  thought ;  the  highest,  gifted  with  reflect- 
ive reason,  may  make  their  own  thoughts  the 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION  33 

subject  of  thought.  So,  our  conception  of  indi- 
viduality is  from  ourselves,  conscious  beino-s: 
it  is  carried  down  unqualified  to  the  brute 
animals  with  which  we  are  associated;  it  be- 
comes vague  and  shadowy  in  plants,  but  still, 
somehow,  the  idea  inheres  throughout  all  organ- 
isms. The  beginning  of  organization  is  indi- 
viduation or  tendency  to  individualize.  The 
completed  self  is  man. 

/  K 

Here  let  me  interject  a  remark  in  correction 
of  a  common  misapprehension  as  regards  the 
nature  of  the  simplicity  of  the  lowest  organisms. 
An  animalcule  and  a  unicellular  plant,  or  the  cel- 
lular components  of  common  plants  or  animals, 
are  simple  indeed,  comparatively.  But  the  recent 
science  which  has  brought  out  the  close  connec- 
tion of  the  lower  with  the  higher  forms  (and 
showed  that  through  all  "  one  increasing  purpose 
runs ")  is  also  showing,  in  all  the  latest  micro- 
scopic work,  that  the  plant-cell  and  the  animal- 
cell  are  really  very  complex  structures,  and  the 
processes  through  which  one  cell  becomes  two, 
instead  of  being  a  simple  bisection,  prove  to  be 
very  elaborate  and  wonderful.  The  further  the 
investigation  is  carried  under  the  modern  micro- 
scope, the   more  complex  and  recondite    does 

3 


rJ 


34  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

their  structure  and  behavior  appear  to  be.  They 
seemed  to  be  simple  because  they  are  small; 
but  much  of  the  simplicity  vanishes  upon  inti- 
mate acquaintance.  Wherefore,  in  view  of  re- 
cent discoveries  of  this  sort,  it  is  premature  to 
conclude  that  the  "little  lumps  of  protoplasm " 
described  by  Hseckel  are  really  destitute  of 
organic  structure.  It  is  an  illusion  to  fancy  that 
the  mystery  of  life  is  less  in  an  amoeba  or  a 
blood-corpuscle  than  in  a  man. 

From  individuals  in  themselves,  let  us  pass  to 
questions  relating  to  their  succession  and  kinds. 
Plants  and  animals,  each  propagating  their 
kind,  produce  lines  of  individuals,  sustaining  to 
each  other  the  relation  of  parent  and  progeny. 
These  lines  are  the  species  of  the  naturalist. 
Have  the  species  come  down  from  the  begin- 
ning of  life,  unaltered  or  altered;  or  have  there 
been  successive  creations  ? 

Taking  first  the  vegetable  and  animal  king- 
doms as  a  whole,  it  has  long  been  well  under- 
stood that  ages  upon  ages  have  passed  since  the 
earth  was  stocked  with  living  beings  of  numerous 
sorts.  Kind  after  kind  has  appeared,  nourished, 
and  disappeared;  and,  in  the  long  succession, 
species  of  progressively  higher  rank  have  come 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  35 

into  existence,  the  forms  more  and  more  ap- 
proximating those  which  now  exist.  There  is 
good  reason  to  believe  that  at  more  than  one 
epoch  the  earth  has  been  as  fully  stocked  with 
species  as  it  is  now,  and  in  equal  diversity, 
except  as  to  the  highest  types.  What  relation 
-  have  these  beings  of  the  earlier  and  of  the  suc- 
ceeding times  sustained  to  each  other  and  to 
the  present  inhabitants  of  the  earth  ? 

Half  a  century  ago,  when  I  began  to  read 
scientific  books  and  journals,  the  commonly  re- 
ceived doctrine  was,  that  the  earth  had  been 
completely  depopulated  and  repopulated  over 
and  over,  each  time  with  a  distinct  population; 
and  that  the  species  which  now,  along  with  man, 
occupy  the  present  surface  of  the  earth,  belong 
to  an  ultimate  and  independent  creation,  having 
an  ideal  but  no   genealogical   connection  with 
those  that  preceded.     This  view,  as  a  rounded 
whole  and  in  all  its  essential  elements,  has  very 
recently  disappeared  from  science.     It   died  a 
royal   death   with   Agassiz,  who  maintained  it 
with  all  his  great  ability,  as  long  as  it  was  tena- 
ble.    I  am  not  aware  that  it  now  has  any  scien- 
tific upholder.     It  is  certain  that  there  has  been 
no  absolute  severance  of  the  present  from  the 
nearer  past ;  for  while  some  species  have  taken 


36  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

the  place  of  other  species,  not  a  few  have  sur- 
vived unchanged,  or  almost  unchanged.     And 
it  is  most  probable  that  this  holds  throughout ; 
for  certain  species  appear  to  have  bridged  the 
intervals   between   successive  epochs  all  along 
the   line,  surviving  from  one  to   another,  and 
justifying  the  inference  that  species  —  however 
originated  —  have  come  in  and  gone  out  one  by 
one,  and  that  probably  no  universal  catastrophe 
has  ever  blotted  out  life  from  the  earth.     Life 
seems  to  have  gone  on,  through  many  and  great 
vicissitudes,  now  with  losses,  now  with  renewals, 
and   everywhere    at   length  with  change;  but 
from  first  to  last  it  has  inhered  in  one  system 
of  nature,  one  vegetable  and  one  animal  king- 
dom, which   themselves   show  indications  of  a 
common  starting-point.     As  respects  the  vege- 
tation, from  which  I  should  naturally  draw  illus- 
trations, the  nature  and  amount  of  the  likeness 
between  the  existing  flora  and  that  of  a  preced- 
ing geological  period  has  recently  been  summed 
up  by  Saporta  in  the  statement  that  there  is 
not  a  tree   nor   a   shrub   in  Europe  or  North 
America  which   has  not   recognizable  relatives 
in  the  fossil  remains  of  the  tertiary  period.     It 
is  like  visiting   a  country  church-yard,  where 
"The   rude  forefathers   of  the  hamlet  deep," 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  37 

and  spelling  out,  one  by  one,  from  mossed  and 
broken  gravestones,  the  names  of  most  of  the 
living  inhabitants  of  the  parish,  —  names  differ- 
ing it  may  be  in  orthography  from  those  on 
the  village  signs  ;  but,  as  of  the  people,  so  of  theV 
trees,  it  is  beyond  reasonable  doubt  that  the 
later  are  descendants  of  the  earlier. 

The  same  holds  true  of  animals;  and  the 
facts  therefore  point  toward  the  conclusion  that 
existing  species  in  general  are  descended  from 
tertiary  ancestors.  But  if  so  they  have  mostly 
undergone  change,  and  great  change  as  we  go 
farther  back  with  the  comparison.  And  there 
are  many  existing  forms  of  which  no  fossil  an- 
cestor is  known.  What  relation,  if  any,  can 
these  sustain  to  a  by-gone  flora  or  fauna  ?  And 
with  what  reason  do  we  predicate  change  of 
species  in  former  times  if  they  are  not  change^ 
able  now  ?  This  brings  up  the  question  of  the 
fixity  or  variability  of  species. 

Scientific  opinion  upon  this  point  is  not  what 
it  was  thirty  or  forty  years  ago.  Then  it  was  gen- 
erally, though  not  universally,  believed  that  spe- 
cies are  perfectly  definite  and  stable;  capable  of 
variation,  indeed,  but  only  within  circumscribed 
limits.  Wherever  it  was  difficult  or  impractica- 
ble to  discriminate  them,  the  difficulty  was  pre- 


38  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION 

sumed  to  be,  not  in  the  things  themselves,  but 
in   the  imperfection  of  the  naturalist's  knowl- 
edge or  acumen.     There  was  the  evidence  of  a 
good  number  of  cases  to  show  that  species  had 
not  perceptibly  altered  in  four  or  five  thousand 
years,  and  of  some  having  lasted  for  a  vastly 
longer  time.     Hence  it  was  an  article  of  scien- 
tific faith  that  species  on  the  whole  were  fixed 
now,  and  that  probably  they  have  come  down 
essentially  unaltered  from  the  beginning,  —  a  be- 
ginning  which  was  wholly  beyond  the  ken  and 
scope  of  science,  which  is  concerned  with  ques- 
tions about  how  things  go  on,  and  has  nothing 
to  say  as  to  how  they  absolutely  began.     The 
naturalists  of  that   day   might   suppose  —  cer- 
tainly many  of  them  did  suppose  —  that  exist- 
ing species  may  have  come  into  being  by  other 
than  direct  supernatural  origination,  and,  indeed, 
the  foremost  of  them  were  well  aware  that  the 
question  of  origin  would  have  to  be  reargued 
at  no  distant  day.    But,  so  far,  the  various  specu- 
lative attempts  at  explaining  the  mystery  of  the 
incoming  of  species  had  not  been  encouraging, 
and  eminent  naturalists  deprecated  all  general 
theories  of  the  sort,  as  at  the  best  a  waste  of 
time.    So  the  fixity  and  inscrutability  of  species 
—  though  silently  doubted  by  some,  and  con- 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  39 

troverted  by  a  few  —  was  still  the  postulate  of 
natural  history;  and  more  than  one  laborious 
naturalist  has  been  known  to  declare  that,  if  this 
fixity  was  not  complete,  natural  history  was  not 
worth  pursuing  as  a  science. 

There  is  now  a  different  attitude  toward  this 
class  of  questions.  First,  the  absoluteness  of 
species  is  no  longer  taken  for  granted.  That 
species  have  a  stability,  that  every  form  repro- 
duces after  its  kind,  is  obvious ;  but  it  is  equally 
obvious  that  the  similarity  of  its  individuals  is 
not  complete.  It  had  been  assumed  that  the 
differences  brought  about  by  variation  are  al- 
ways comparatively  small,  unessential,  and  lim- 
ited. This  is  now  partly  doubted,  and  partly 
explained  away. 

In  the  first  place,  much  of  the  popular  idea  of 
the  distinctness  of  all  species  rests  on  a  fallacy, 
which  is  obvious  enough  when  once  pointed 
out.  In  systematic  works,  every  plant  and  ani- 
mal must  be  referred  to  some  species,  every 
species  is  described  by  such  and  such  marks, 
and  in  the  books  one  species  is  as  good  as 
another.  The  absoluteness  of  species,  being 
the  postulate  of  the  science,  was  taken  for 
granted  to  begin  with;    and   so  all  the   forms  , 

which  have  been  named  and  admitted  into  the 


40  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

systematic  works  as  species,  are  thereby  assumed 
to  be  completely  distinct.     All  the  doubts  and 
uncertainties  which  may  have  embarrassed  the 
naturalist  when   he   proposed    or   admitted   a 
particular  species,  the  nice  balancing  of  the  pro- 
babilities  and  the  hesitating  character  of  the 
judgment,  either  do  not  appear  at  all  in  the 
record  or  are  overlooked  by  all  but  the  critical 
student.    Whether  the  form  under  consideration 
should  be  regarded  as  a  new  species,  or  should 
be  combined  with  others  into  a  more  general- 
ized and  variable  species,  is  a  question  which  a 
naturalist   has   to   decide  for  the   time   being, 
often  upon  insufficient  and  always  upon  incom- 
plete knowledge  ;  and  increasing  knowledge  and 
wider  observation  generally  raise  full  as  many 
doubts  as  they  settle.     This  may  not  be  so  de- 
cidedly the  case  in  zoology  as  in  botany ;  but  I 
incline  to  the  opinion  that  there  is  no  wide  dif- 
ference in  this  respect.     The  patient  and  plod- 
ding botanist  spends  much  of  his  time  in  the 
endeavor  to   draw  specific   lines   between   the 
parts#of  a  series  the  extremes  of  which  are  pa- 
tently different,  while  the  means  seem  to  fill 
the   interval.     When   he   is  addressed   by  the 
triumphant  popular  argument,  "  if  one  form  and 
one   species   has  been   derived   from   another, 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  41 

show  us  the  intermediate  forms  which  prove  it," 
he  can  only  ejaculate  his  wish  that  this  ideal 
vegetable  kingdom  was  the  one  he  had  to  deal 
with.     Moreover  when  he  shows  the  connecting 

o 

links,  he  is  told,  "  Then  these  are  all  varieties 
of  one  species;  species  are  fixed,  only  with 
wider  variation  than  was  thought."  And  when 
he  points  to  the  wide  difference  between  the 
extremes,  as  being  greater  than  that  between 
undoubted  species,  he  is  met  with  the  rejoinder, 
"  Then  here  are  two  or  three  or  more  species 
which  undoubtedly  have  true  distinctions,  if 
only  you  would  find  them  out."  That  is  quite 
possible,  but  it  is  hardly  possible  that  such  fine 
differences  are  supernatural. 

Some  one  when  asked  if  he  believed  in  ghosts, 
replied,  No,  he  had  seen  too  many  of  them.  So 
I  have  been  at  the  making  and  unmaking  of  far 
too  many  species  to  retain  any  overweening 
confidence  in  their  definiteness  and  stability.  I 
believe  in  them,  certainly.  I  do  not  exactly  / 
agree  that  they  "  are  shadows,  not  substantial 
things,"  but  I  believe  that  they  have  only  a 
relative  fixity  and  permanence. 

You  will  ask  if  lack  of  capacity  to  interbreed 
is  not  a  criterion  of  species.  I  must  answer,  No. 
As  a  matter  of  course  individuals  of  widely  di- 


42  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

verse  species  cannot  interbreed  ;  those  of  re- 
lated species  not  uncommonly  do ;  but  it  is  said 
that  when  they  do  interbreed  the  hybrid  pro- 
geny is  sterile.  Commonly  it  is  so,  sometimes 
not.  The  rule  is  not  sufficiently  true  to  serve  as 
a  test,  either  in  the  vegetable  or  in  the  animal 
kino-dom.  The  only  practical  use  of  the  test  is 
for  the  discrimination  of  the  higher  grade  of 
varieties  from  species.  Now  in  fapt  some  varie- 
ties of  the  same  species  will  hardly  interbreed 
at  all;  while  some  species  interbreed  most 
freely,  and  produce  fully  fertile  offspring.  So 
the  supposed  criterion  fails  in  the  only  cases  in 
which  it  could  be  of  service.  All  that  can  be 
said  is,  that  whereas  known  varieties  tend  to 
interbreed  with  unimpaired  and  sometimes  with 
increased  fertility,  distinct  species  of  near  re- 
semblance tend  not  to  interbreed  at  all ;  and 
between  the  two  extremes  there  are  all  inter- 
mediate conditions.  Here,  as  throughout  or- 
ganic nature,  the  extremes  are  far  apart ;  the 
interval  is  filled  with  gradations. 

What  then  is  the  substantial  difference  be- 
tween varieties  and  species  ?  Just  here  is  the 
turning-point  between  the  former  view  and  the 
present.  The  former  doctrine  was  that  varieties 
come  about  in  the  course  of  nature,  but  species 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  43 

not ;  that  varieties  became  what  they  are,  but 
that  species  were  originally  made  what  they  are. 
I  suppose  that,  even  before  the  day  of  Darwin- 
ism, most  working  naturalists  were  reaching  the 
conviction  that  this  distinction  was  untenable ; 
that  the  same  rule  was  applicable  to  both  ;  and 
therefore  that  either. varieties  did  not  come  in 
the  course  of  nature,  or  that  species  did. 

Perfectly  apprehending  the  alternative  and 
its  consequences,  Agassiz  took  the  ground  that 
varieties  as  well  as  species  were  primordial,  or 
rather  that  the  more  marked  forms  called  va- 
rieties by  most  naturalists  were  species,  and 
therefore  original  creations.  Rightly  to  un- 
derstand his  view,  it  must  be  taken  along  with 
his  conception  of  species,  as  consisting  from  the 
very  first  of  a  multitude  of  individuals. 

Other  naturalists  were  looking  to  the  opposite 
alternative,  and  were  coming  to  the  conclusion 
that  species  as  well  as  varieties  were  natural 
developments.  In  botany,  this  conclusion  was 
reached  more  than  sixty  years  ago,  through 
observation  and  experiment,  by  an  English 
clergyman  and  naturalist,  Herbert,  afterward 
Dean  of  Manchester.  He  announced  his  con- 
viction that  "horticultural  experiments  have 
established,   beyond   the   possibility   of    doubt, 


44  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

that  botanical  species  are  only  a  higher  and 
more  permanent  class  of  varieties/'  and,  con- 
sequently, that  the  genus  is  the  progenitor  of 
the  species  belonging  to  it.  Others  have 
reached  the  same  conclusion  by  more  specula- 
tive routes,  and  have  deduced  the  theoretical 
consequences.  But  no  marked  impression  was 
made  until  the  hypothesis  of  natural  selec- 
tion, or  the  preservation  of  favored  races 
in  the  struggle  for  life  was  promulgated,  and 
supplied  a  scientific  reason  for  the  diversifica- 
tion of  varieties  into  species.  The  principle 
brought  to  view  is  too  obvious  to  have  been 
wholly  overlooked.  It  is  interesting  to  notice 
that  the  earliest  known  anticipation  of  that 
principle  which  Darwin  and  Wallace  developed 
almost  simultaneously,  was  published  sixty  years 
ago,  by  Dr.  Wells,  the  sagacious  author  of  the 
theory  of  dew,  who  hit  upon  the  idea  of  natu- 
ral selection  while  resident  in  America.  As 
abstracted  by  Mr.  Darwin,  who  evidently  takes 
delight  in  the  discovery  of  these  anticipations, 
the  points  which  Dr.  Wells  made  were  substan- 
tially these  :  — 

All  animals  vary  more  or  less :  agriculturists 
improve  domesticated  animals  by  selection. 
What  is  thus  done  by  art  is  done  with  equal 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  45 

efficacy,  though    more   slowly,  by  Nature,   in 
the  formation   of  varieties  of  mankind,  fitted 
for  the  country  which  they  inhabit,  and  in  this 
way :  Negroes  and  mulattoes    enjoy  immunity 
from  certain  tropical  diseases,  and  white  men  a 
comparative  immunity  from  those  of  cold  cli- 
mates.     Under  the  variation   common   to   all 
animals,  some  of  the  darker  would  be  better 
adapted  than  the  rest  to  bear  the  diseases  of  a 
'warm  country,  —  say,  of  tropical  Africa.     This 
race   would   consequently  multiply,  while   the 
others   would   decrease,   directly,   because   the 
prevalent  diseases  would  be  more  fatal  to  them, 
and   indirectly,  by   inability   to  contend   with 
their  more  vigorous  neighbors.     Through  the 
continued  operation  of  the  same  causes,  darker 
and  darker  races  would  prevail  over  the  less 
dark,  and  in  time  would  monopolize  the  region 
where  they  originated  or  into  which  they  had 
advanced.      Similarly    would    white    races,   to 
the  exclusion  of  dark,  be  developed  and  prevail 
in  cooler  regions. 

Now,  this  simple  principle,  —  extended  from 
races  to  species ;  from  the  present  to  geological 
ages ;  from  man  and  domesticated  animals  to  all 
animals  and  plants  ;  from  struggle  with  disease 
to  struggle  for  food,  for  room,  and  against  the 


46  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

diverse  hardships  which  at  times  beset  all  living 
things,  and  which  are  intensified  by  the  Malthu- 
sian  law  of  the  pressure  of  population  on  sub- 
sistence,—  population    tending   to   multiply   in 
geometrical  progression,  while  food  can  increase 
only  in   a  much   lower  ratio,  and   room  may 
not  be  increasable  at  all,  so  that  out  of  multi- 
tudinous progeny  only  the  few  fittest  to    the 
special  circumstances   in  each   generation   can 
possibly  survive  and  propagate,  —  this  is  Dar- 
winism; that  is,  Darwinism  pure  and  simple,  free 
iA>        L.  ^rom  a^  speculative  accretions. 

Here,  it  may  be  remarked  that  natural  selec- 
tion by  itself  is  not  an  hypothesis,  nor  even  a 
theory.     It  is  a  truth,  —  a  catena  of  facts  and 
direct  inferences  from  facts.     As  has  been  hap- 
pily said,  it  is  a  truth  of  the  same  kind  as  that 
which  we  enunciate  in  saying  that  round  stones 
will   roll   down   a   hill  further   than  flat   ones. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  natural  selection  oper- 
ates ;  the  open  question  is,  what  do  its  opera- 
tions   amount    to.      The    hypothesis    based    on 
this  principle  is,  that  the  struggle  for  life  and 
survival  of   only  tjie  fittest    among    individu- 
als, all  disposed   to  vary  and  no  two  exactly 
alike,   will   account   for   the    diversification   of 
the   species   and  forms  of   vegetable  and  ani- 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  47 

mal  life,  —  will  even  account  for  the  rise,  in  the 
course  of  countless  ages,  from  simpler  and  lower 
to  higher  and  more  specialized  living  beings. 

We  need  not  here  enter  into  any  further  ex- 
planation of  this  now  familiar  but  not  always 
well-understood  hypothesis ;  nor  need  I  here 
pronounce  any  judgment  of  my  own  upon  it. 
No  doubt  it  may  account  for  much  which  has 
not  received  other  scientific  explanation  ;  and 
Mr.  Darwin  is  not  the  man  to  claim  that  it  will 
account  for  every  thing.  But  before  we  can 
judge  at  all  of  its  capabilities,  we  need  clearly 
to  understand  what  is  contained  in  the  hypothe- 
sis ;  for  what  can  be  got  out  of  it,  in  the  way  of 
explanation,  depends  upon  what  has  gone  into 
it.  So  certain  discriminations  should  here  be 
attended  to. 

Natural  selection  we  understand  to  be  a  sort 
of  personification  or  generalized  expression  for 
the  processes  and  the  results  of  the  whole  in- 
terplay of  living  things  on  the  earth  with  their 
inorganic  surroundings  and  with  each  other. 
The  hypothesis  asserts  that  these  may  account, 
not  for  the  introduction  of  life,  but  for  its  di- 
versification into  the  forms  and  kinds  which 
we  now  behold.  This,  I  suppose,  is  tantamount 
to  asserting   that  the  differences  between  one 


48  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

species  and  another  now  existing,  and  between 
these  and  their  predecessors,  has  come  to  pass  in 
the  course  of  Nature ;  that  is,  without  miracle. 
In  these  days,  all  agree  that  a  scientific  inquiry 
whether  this  may  be  so  —  that  is,  whether  there 
are  probable  grounds  for  believing  it  (no  thought- 
ful person  expects  to  prove  it)  —  is  perfectly 
legitimate  ;  and,  so  far  as  it  becomes  probable,  I 
imagine  that  you  might  safely  accept  it.  For  the 
hypothesis,  in  its  normal  and  simplest  form, — 
when  kept  close  to  the  facts,  and  free  from  ex- 
traneous assumptions  —  is  merely  this  :  — 

Given  the  observed  capacity  for  variation  as 
an  inexhaustible  factor,  assuming  that  what  has 
varied  is  still  prone  to  vary  (and  there  are 
grounds  for  the  assumption),  and  natural  selec- 
tion will—  so  to  say — pick  out  for  preservation 
the  fittest  forms  for  particular  surroundings, 
lead  on  and  diversify  them,  and,  by  continual 
elimination  of  the  less  fit,  segregate  the  sur- 
vivors into  distinct  species.  This,  you  see,  as- 
sumes, and  does  not  account  for, The  impulse  to 
variation,  assumes  that  variation  is  an  inherent 
and  universal  capacity,  and  is  the  efficient  cause 
of  all  the  diversity ;  while  natural  selection  is 
the  proximate  cause  of  it.  So  it  is  the  selection, 
not  the  creation  of  forms  that  is  accounted  for. 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  49 

Darwinism  does  not  so  much  explain  why  we 
have  the  actual  forms,  as  it  does  why  we  have 
only  these  and  not  all  intermediate  forms,  —  in 
short,  why  we  have  species.  There  is  of  course 
a  cause  for  the  variation.  Nobody  supposes 
that  any  thing  changes  without  a  cause  ;  and 
there  is  no  reason  for  thinking  that  proximate 
causes  of  variation  may  not  come  to  be  known ; 
but  we  hardly  know  the  conditions,  still  less  the 
causes  now.  The  ■  point  I  wish  to  make  here  is 
that  natural  selection  —  however  you  expand 
its  meaning  —  cannot  be  invoked  as  the  cause 
of  that  upon  which  it  operates,  i  e.,  variation. 
Otherwise,  if  by  natural  selection  is  meant  the 
totality  of  all  the  known  and  unknown  causes 
of  whatever  comes  to  pass  in  organic  nature, 
then  the  term  is  no  longer  an  allowable  person- 
ification, but  a  sheer  abstraction,  which  mean- 
ing every  thing,  can  explain  nothing.  It  is  like 
saying  that  whatever  happens  is  the  cause  of 
whatever  comes  to  pass. 

We  may  conclude,  therefore,  that  natural 
selection,  in  the  sense  of  the  originator  of  the 
term,  and  in  the  only  congruous  sense,  stands 
for  the  influence  of  inorganic  nature  upon  living 
things,  along  with  the  influence  of  these  upon 
each  other;  and  that  what  it  purports  to  ac- 


'*' 


50  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

count  for  is  the  picking  out,  from  the  multitude 
of  incipient  variations,  of  the  few  which  are  to 
survive,  and  which  thereby  acquire  distinctness. 

There  is  a  further  assumption  in  the  hypo- 
thesis which  must  not  be  overlooked ;  namely, 
that  the  variation  of  plants  and  animals,  out  of 
which  so  much  comes,  is  indefinite  or  all-direc- 
tioned  and  accidental.  This,  I  would  insist,  is 
no  fundamental  part  of  the  hypothesis  of  the 
derivation  of  species,  and  is  clearly  no  part  of 
the  principle  of  natural  selection.  But  it  is  an 
assumption  which  Mr.  Darwin  judges  to  be  war- 
ranted by  the  facts,  and  in  some  of  its  elements 
it  is  unavoidable.  Evidently  if  the  innate  ten- 
dency to  vary  upon  which  physical  circum- 
stances operate  is  indefinite,  then  the  variations 
which  the  circumstances  elicit,  and  which  could 
not  otherwise  amount  to  any  thing,  must  be  ac- 
cidental in  the  same  sense  as  are  the  circum- 
stances themselves.  Out  of  this  would  imme- 
diately rise  the  question  as  to  what  can  be  the 
foundation  and  beginning  of  this  long  and  won- 
derful chapter  of  accidents  which  has  produced 
and  maintained,  not  only  for  this  time  but 
through  all  biological  periods,  an  ever-varying 
yet  ever,  well-adapted  cosmos. 

But  the  facts,  so  far  as  I  can  judge,  do  not 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  51 

support  the  assumption  of  every-sided  and  in- 
different variation.  Variation  "is  somehow  and 
somewhere  introduced  in  the  transit  from  parent 
to  offspring.  The  actual  variations  displayed 
by  the  progeny  of  a  particular  plant  or  animal 
may  differ  much  in  grade,  and  tend  in  more 
than  one  direction,  but  in  fact  they  do  not  ap- 
pear to  tend  in  many  directions.  It  is  generally 
agreed  that  the  variation  is  from  within,  is  an 
internal  response  to  external  impressions.  All 
that  we  can  possibly  know  of  the  nature  of  the 
inherent  tendency  to  vary  must  be  gathered 
from  the  facts  of  the  response.  And  these,  I 
judge,  are  not  such  as  to  require  or  support  the 
assumption  of  a  tendency  to  wholly  vague  and 
all-directioned  variation. 

Let  us  here  correct  a  common  impression 
that  Darwinian  evolution  predicates  actual  or 
necessary  variation  of  all  existing  species,  and 
counts  that  the  variation  must  be  in  some  de- 
finite ratio  to  the  time.  That  is  not  the  idea, 
nor  the  fact.  "  Evolution  is  not  a  course  of 
hap-hazard  and  incessant  change,  but  a  continu- 
ing re-adjustment,  which  may  or  may  not,  ac- 
cording to  circumstances,  involve  considerable 
changes  in  a  given  time."  Every  form  is  in  a 
relatively  stable  equilibrium,  else  it  would  not 


52  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

exist.  Forms  adjusted  to  their  surroundings 
ought  by  the  hypothesis  to  remain  unchanged 
until  the  circumstances  change.  Only  those  of 
their  variations  could  come  to  any  thing  which 
happened  to  be  equally  well  adapted  to  the 
unchanged  circumstances ;  and  this  may  be 
what  we  have  when  two  or  more  nearly  re- 
lated species  inhabit  similar  stations  in  the 
same  area. 

From  this  point  of  view  you  see  how  wide 
of  the  mark  are  those  who  imagine  that  Dar- 
winian evolution  supposes  that  the  organic 
world  was  in  early  times,  or  at  any  time,  out  of 
joint  or  in  ill  relations  to  the  surroundings.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  of  the  very  nature  of  natural 
selection,  that,  while  inducing  changes  eventu- 
ally immense,  it  should  preserve  throughout  all 
time  a  condition  of  harmonious  adaptation.  Ca- 
tastrophes must  destroy ;  but  gradual  modifica- 
tion, under  the  long  and  silent  struggle  which 
never  hastes  and  never  rests,  preserves  while  it 
renovates  and  diversifies  the  races. 

I  ought  here  to  state  that  there  are  eminent 
naturalists  (one  of  them  of  your  own  university) 
who  accept  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  but  who 
think  little  of  natural  selection  as  a  modus  oper- 
andi in  the  diversification  of  species ;  and  there 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  53 

are  distinguished  writers,  not  naturalists,  who, 
from  other  points  of  view  are  ready  to  accept 
"  the  doctrine  of  the  successive  evolution  from 
ancestral  germs  of  higher  and  higher  forms  of 
life  and  mind,"  *  while  they  profess  to  have 
buried  the  principle  of  natural  selection  and 
with  it  the  Malthusian  theory  of  population  in 
one  common  grave.  These  are  evolutionists,  in 
their  way,  because  the  probability  of  evolution- 
ary theories  springs  from  the  very  various  lines 
of  facts,  otherwise  inexplicable,  which  they 
harmonize  and  explain  :  —  in  geology,  the  pre- 
vious existence  of  forms  more  and  more  like 
those  now  existing,  and  at  length  coalescing  in 
them;  in  geography,  the  actual  distribution  of 
species  and  genera  over  the  earth's  surface ;  in 
systematic  natural  history,  the  reason  why  spe- 
cies and  genera  and  orders  are  so  variously 
related,  are  here  connected  by  transitions  and 
there  separated  by  wide  gaps;  in  morphology 
why  the  same  functions  may  be  assumed  by 
different  organs,  or  the  same  kind  of  organ  may 
perform  here  one  function  and  there  another, 
or  again  exist  as  a  vestige,  of  no  service  at  all ; 
in  anatomy  and  biology,  the  transition  from  one 
element  of  structure  to  another,  the  gradual 
*  Bowen  in  "  The  North  American  Review,"  November,  1S79. 


54  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

specialization  of  organs,  and  the  remarkable  co- 
incidence between  the  order  of  the  development 
in  the  individual  animal  and  that  of  the  rise 
from  low  to  high  in  the  scale  of  being,  and  that 
of  the  successive  appearance  of  the  grades  in 
time ;  finally  in  psychology,  the  gradations  be- 
tween beings  endowed  with  rudimentary  sensa- 
tion and  beings  endowed  with  mind. 

Here,  where  the  "  touch  of  Nature  makes  the 
whole  world  kin,"  we  reach  the  sensitive  point. 
Man,  while  on  the  one  side  a  wholly  exceptional 
being,  is  on  the  other  an  object  of  natural  his- 
tory, —  a  part  of  the  animal  kingdom.  If  you 
agree  with  Quatrefages  that  man  is  a  kingdom 
by  himself,  you  must  agree  with  him  that  this 
kingdom  is  solely  intellectual ;  that  he  is  as  cer- 
tainly and  completely  an  animal  as  he  is  cer- 
tainly something  more.  We  are  sharers  not 
only  of  animal  but  of  vegetable  life,  sharers  with 
the  higher  brute  animals  in  common  instincts 
and  feelings  and  affections.  It  seems  to  me  that 
there  is  a  sort  of  meanness  in  the  wish  to  ignore 
the  tie.  I  fancy  that  human  beings  may  be 
more  humane  when  they  realize  that,  as  their 
dependent  associates  live  a  life  in  which  man  has 
a  share,  so  they  have  rights  which  man  is  bound 
to  respect. 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  55 

Man,  in  short,  is  a  partaker  of  the  natural  as 
well  as  of  the  spiritual.  And  the  evolutionist 
may  say  with  the  apostle :  "Howbeit  that  was  not 
first  which  is  spiritual,  but  that  which  is  natural, 
and  afterward  that  which  is  spiritual."  Man, 
"  formed  of  the  dust  of  the  ground,"  endowed 
with  "the  breath  of  life,"  "became  a  living 
soul."  Is  there  any  warrant  for  affirming  that 
these  processes  were  instantaneous  ? 

As  has  just  been  intimated,  the  characteristic 
of  that  particular  theory  of  evolution  which  is 
now  in  the  ascendant  is  that,  by  taking  advan- 
tage of  "every  creature's  best"  for  bettering 
conditions,  it  has  made  strife  work  for  good, 
throughout  an  immensely  long  line  of  adjust- 
ments and  readjustments,  in  a  series  ascending 
as  it  advanced ;  that  it  supposes  a  process,  not 
from  discord  to  harmony,  but  from  simpler  to 
fuller  and  richer  harmonies,  conserving  through- 
out the  best  adaptations  to  the  then  existing 
conditions.  So  while  its  advocates  nowhere 
contemplate  a   state 

"  When  Nature  underneath  a  heap, 
Of  jarring  atoms  lay, 
And  could  not  heave  her  head," 

they  may  appropriate  Dryden's  closing  lines,  — 


56  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

11  From  harmony,  from  heavenly  harmony, 
This  universal  frame  began, 
From  harmony  to  harmony 
Through  all  the  compass  of  the  notes  it  ran, 
The  diapason  closing  full  in  man." 

I  have  now  indicated,  at  more  than  sufficient 
length  for  one  discourse,  some  of  the  principal 
recent  changes  and  present  tendencies  in  scien- 
tific belief,  especially  in  biology.  Even  the  most 
advanced  of  the  views  here  presented  are  held 
by  very  many  scientific  men,  —  some  as  estab- 
lished truths,  some  as  probable  opinions.  There 
is  a  class,  moreover,  by  whom  all  these  scientific 
theories,  and  more,  are  held  as  ascertained  facts, 
and  as  the  basis  of  philosophical  inferences  which 
strike  at  the  root  of  theistic  beliefs. 

It  remains  to  consider  what  attitude  thought- 
ful  men  and  Christian  believers  should  take 
respecting  them,  and  how  they  stand  related  to 
beliefs  of  another  order.  That  will  be  the  topic 
of  a  following  lecture. 


LECTURE    II.  —  THE  RELATIONS    OF    SCIEN- 
TIFIC TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF. 


TN  a  preceding  discourse  I  brought  to  your 
notice  a  series  of  changes  in  view  and 
opinion  which  have  taken  place  among  scien- 
tific men  within  my  own  remembrance.  I 
restricted  the  survey  to  the  biological  sciences 
(with  merely  a  reference  to  the  principle  of  the 
conservation  of  energy  in  its  application  to  the 
organic  world),  and  in  these  to  the  supposed 
facts  and  immediate  inferences,  to  what  may  be 
called  their  natural-historical  interpretation. 

These  new  views  are  full  of  interest  of  a  kind 
which  you  cannot  expect  a  naturalist  to  under- 
value. For  they  have  greatly  exalted  his  call- 
ing. In  the  days  of  Linnoeus,  who  died  only 
a  hundred  and  two  years  ago,  and  throughout 
a  long  generation  of  his  followers,  species  were 


58  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

looked  upon  as  "  simple  curiosities  of  Nature," 
to  be  inventoried  and  described ;  and  striking 
phenomena  in  plants  and  animals,  as  something 
to  be  wondered  at,  but  not  to  be  explained. 
With  the  advent  of  Morphology,  the  precursor 
and  parent  of  Evolution,  Natural  History  devel- 
oped from  a  curious  pursuit,  training  the  observ- 
ing powers,  to  that  of  a  true  science,  engaging 
the  reason  in  the  search  for  causes.  According 
to  one  definition,  "Science  is  the  labor  of  mind 
applied  to  Nature."  In  this  sense,  modern  bot- 
any and  zoology  have  certainly  become  scien- 
tific. They  are  at  least  attempting  great  labors. 
But  in  widely  extending,  as  they  now  do,  the 
operation  of  natural  causes  in  the  organic  world, 
they  make  close  connections  between  biology 
and  physics,  or  what  used  to  be  called,  and  I 
think  deserves  to  be  called,  natural  philoso- 
phy. And  the  connection  brings  in,  or  brings 
up  afresh,  considerations  which  affect  the  ground 
of  natural  and  revealed  religion.  Under  this 
aspect,  they  properly  excite  your  anxious  atten- 
tion. 

I  used  throughout  the  phrase  "  scientific  be- 
lief," as  the  one  best  suited  to  the  occasion. 
The  term  is  comprehensive  and  elastic,  cover- 
ing many  degrees  of  conviction  or  assent,  from 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  59 

moral  certainty  down  to  probable  opinion.     In 
this  respect,  scientific  and  theological  beliefs  are 
similar;  as  they  also  are  in  being  mainly  states 
of  mind  toward  that  which  is  incapable  of  dem- 
onstration,—  either  because,  as  in  the  case  of 
ultimate  beliefs  (on  which  all  science  and  knowl- 
edge are  based)  it  is  impossible  to  go  beyond 
them,  or  else  because  the  subject-matter  is  not 
positively  known,  and  certainty  is  unattainable 
from  the  nature  or  the  present  conditions  of  the 
case.     The  proofs  upon  which  both  biological 
and  theological  investigations  have  to  rely  are 
largely  probabilities,  some  of  a   higher,  some 
of  a  lower  order,  and  much  that  is  accepted  for 
the  time  is  taken  on  trial  or  on  prima  facie  evi- 
dence.    Much  also  is  or  should  be  held  under 
suspense    of  judgment,  a   state    of  mind  emi- 
nently favorable  to  accurate  investigation.     As 
to  those  who  can  forthwith  assort  the  contents 
of  their  minds  into  two  compartments,  one  for 
what  they  believe  and  the  other  for  what  they 
disbelieve,  neither  their  belief  nor  their  denial 
can  be  of  much  account.      In  all  subjects  of 
inquiry,  those  only  are  to  be  trusted  who  dis- 
criminate between  inevitable  beliefs,  established 
convictions,  probable  opinions,  and  hypotheses 
on  trial. 


60  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

Now,  our  general  inquiry  in  this  lecture  is, 
What  should  be  the  attitude,  I  will  not  say  of 
theological  students,  but  of  thoughtful  men, 
in  respect  to  scientific  beliefs,  tendencies,  and 
anticipations,  such  as  we  have  been  consid- 
ering ? 

To  a  certain  extent  it  may  well  be  a  waiting 
attitude.      The   strictly  scientific  matters  must 
necessarily  be  left  mainly  to  the  experts,  whose 
very   various   and   independent   investigations, 
pursued  under  every  diversity  of  bias,  must  in 
time  reach  reasonably  satisfactory  conclusions. 
But  the  naturalists  claim  no  monopoly  in  the 
consideration  of  the  great  problems  which  now 
interest  us,  in  which  indeed  most  of  them  de- 
cline   to    take    any  part.     Perhaps   theological 
students  and  divines  might  be  asked  to  wait 
until  views  and  hypotheses  still  ardently  con- 
troverted   among    scientific    investigators    are 
brought  nearer  to  a  settlement.     But  the  dis- 
position to  discount  expected  results,  either  for 
or  against  supernatural  religion,  has  always  pre- 
vailed.    The    theologians   at   least  have  never 
waited,  and  cannot  be  expected  to  wait;  and 
while  some  of  their  contributions  to  the  subject 
have  been  inconsiderate,  others  have  been  most 
valuable. 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  61 

In  any  case,  there  is  no  call  to  wait  on  the 
ground  that  the  disturbing  views  are  only 
hypotheses.  For,  in  the  first  place,  we  should 
have  long  to  wait  for  demonstration  one  way  or 
the  other;  and  one  crop  of  hypotheses  is  the 
fertile  seed  of  another.  Besides,  hypothesis  is 
the  proper  instrument  for  dealing  with  this  class 
of  questions ;  indeed,  it  is  the  essential  precursor 
of  every  fruitful  investigation  in  physical  na- 
ture. You  can  seldom  sound  with  the  plum- 
met while  standing  on  the  shore.  To  do  this 
to  any  purpose,  you  must  launch  out  on  the  sea, 
and  brave  some  risks.  Nearly  all  valuable  re- 
sults have  been  gained  in  this  way.  Newton's 
theory  of  gravitation  was  a  typical  hypothesis, 
and  one  which  happened  to  be  capable  of  early 
and  sufficient  verification.  The  unclulatory  the- 
ory of  light  was  another.  The  nebular  hypoth- 
esis, or  portions  of  it,  and  the  kinetic  theory 
of  gases,  less  verifiable,  are  accepted  willingly 
because  of  the  success  with  which  they  explain 
the  facts.  Evolution  is  a  more  complex,  loose, 
and  less  provable  hypothesis,  or  congeries  of 
hypotheses,  which  can  at  most  have  only  a  rela- 
tive, though  perhaps  continually  increasing  prob- 
ability from  its  power  of  explaining  a  great 
variety  of  facts.     Its  strength  appears  on  com- 


62  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

paring  it  with  the  rival  hypothesis  —  for  such 
it  is  —  of  immediate  creation,  which  neither  ex- 
plains nor  pretends  to  explain  any. 

How  the  more  exact  physical  sciences  are 
becoming  more  reconditely  hypothetical,  espe- 
cially in  the  imagination  of  entities  of  which 
there  can  be  no  possible  proof  beyond  their 
serviceability  in  explaining  phenomena,  we 
must  not  stop  to  consider.  Only  this  may  be 
said,  that  the  adage,  "  Where  faith  begins  sci- 
ence ends"  is  now  well  nigh  inverted.  For 
faith,  in  a  just  sense  of  the  word,  assumes  as 
prominent  a  place  in  science  as  in  religion.  It 
is  indispensable  to  both. 

Let  it  be  noted,  moreover,  that  the  case  we 
have  to  consider  does  not  come  before  the  tri- 
bunal of  reason  with  antecedent  presumptions 
all  on  one  side,  as  theologians  generally  suppose. 
They  say  to  the  naturalists,  not  improperly,  we 
will  think  about  adopting  your  conclusions, 
contrary  as  they  are  to  all  our  prepossessions, 
when  they  are  thoroughly  and  irrevocably  sub- 
stantiated, and  not  till  then.  Your  theory  may 
prove  true,  but  it  seems  vastly  improbable. 
Here  the  naturalist  is  ready  with  a  rejoinder  : 
In  this  world  of  law  you  cannot  expect  us  to 
adopt  your  assumption  of  specific  creations  by 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  63 

miraculous  intervention  with  the  course  of  Na- 
ture, not  once  for  all  at  a  beginning,  but  over 
and  over  in  time.  We  will  accept  intervention 
only  when  and  where  you  can  convincingly  es- 
tablish it,  and  where  we  are  unable  to  explain 
it  away,  as  in  the  case  of  absolute  beginning. 
If  the  naturalist  starts  with  the  presumption 
against  him  when  he  broaches  the  theory  of  the 
descent  of  later  from  preceding  forms  in  the 
course  of  Nature,  so  no  less  does  the  theologian 
when  in  a  world  governed  by  law  he  asserts  a 
break  in  the  continuity  of  natural  cause  and 
effect. 

But,  indeed,  you  are  not  so  much  concerned 
to  know  whether  evolutionary  theories  are 
actually  well-founded  or  ill-founded,  as  you 
are  to  know  whether  if  true,  or  if  received  as 
true,  they  would  impair  the  foundations  of  re- 
ligion. And,  surely,  if  views  of  Nature  which 
are  incompatible  with  theism  and  with  Christi- 
anity can  be  established,  or  can  be  made  as 
tenable  as  the  contrary,  it  is  quite  time  that  we 
knew  it.  I£  on  the  other  hand,  all  real  facts 
and  necessary  inferences  from  them  can  be  ad- 
justed to  our  grounded  religious  convictions,  as 
well  as  other  ascertained  facts  have  been  ad- 
justed, it  may  relieve  many  to  be  assured  of  it. 


64  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

The  best  contribution  that  I  can  offer  towards 
the  settlement  of  these  mooted  questions  may 
be  the  statement  and  explanation  of  my  own 
attitude  in  this  regard,  and  of  the  reasons  which 
determine  it. 

I  accept  substantially,  as  facts,  or  as  appar- 
ently wTell-grounded  inferences,  or  as  fairly 
probable  opinions,  —  according  to  their  nature 
and  degree,  —  the  principal  series  of  changed 
views  which  I  brought  before  you  in  the  pre- 
ceding lecture.  I  have  no  particular  predilec- 
tion for  any  of  them ;  and  I  have  no  particular 
dread  of  any  of  the  consequences  which  legiti- 
mately flow  from  them,  beyond  the  general  awe 
and  sense  of  total  insufficiency  with  which  a 
mortal  man  contemplates  the  mysteries  which 
shut  him  in  on  every  side.  I  claim,  moreover, 
not  merely  allowance,  but  the  right  to  hold 
these  opinions  along  with  the  doctrines  of  natu- 
ral religion  and  the  verities  of  the  Christian 
faith.  There  are  perplexities  enough  to  bewil- 
der our  souls  whenever  and  wherever  we  look 
for  the  causes  and  reasons  of  things ;  but  I  am 
unable  to  perceive  that  the  idea  of  the  evolu- 
tion of  one  species  from  another,  and  of  all  from 
an  initial  form  of  life,  adds  any  new  perplexity 
to  theism. 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  65 

In  unfolding  my  thoughts  upon  the  subject, 
I  wish  to  keep  as  close  "  to  the  solid  ground  of 
Nature  "  as  I  possibly  can,  even  where  the  dis- 
course must  rise  from  the  ground  of  science  into 
the  finer  air  of  philosophy.     Specially  I  must 
heed  the  injunction  :  "  If  thou  hast  any  tidings, 
prithee,  deliver  them  like  a  man  of  this  world," 
and  not  trouble  myself,  nor  you,  with   meta- 
physical   refinements    and    distinctions   which, 
however  needful  in  their  way  and   place,  are 
unnecessary  to  our  purpose.    I  take  for  granted, 
"like  a  man  of  this  world,"  the  objective  reality 
and    substantiality  of  what   we    see    and  deal 
with,  though  I  am  told  it  cannot  be  proved; 
and    I    assume,  —  although    demonstration    is 
impossible,  —  that  what  I  and  my  fellow-men 
cannot  help  believing  we  ought  to  believe,  or 
at  least  must  rest  content  with.     I  suppose  you 
will  agree  with  me  that  it  is  not  science,  at  least 
not  natural  science,  which  raises  the  most  for- 
midable   difficulties   to    Christian    theism,   but 
philosophy,  and  that  it  is  for  philosophy  to  sur- 
mount them. 

The  question  which  science  asks  of  all  it 
meets  is,  What  is  the  system  and  course  of 
things,  and  how  is  this  or  that  a  part  of  it  in 
the  fixed  sequence  of  cause  and  effect?     Philos- 

5 


66  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

ophy  asks  whence  the  system  itself,  and  what 
are  causes  and  effects.  Theology  is  partly  his- 
torical science,  and  partly  philosophy.  Now  I, 
as  a"  scientific  man,  might  rest  in  the  probability 
of  evolution  as  a  general  inference  from  the 
facts  or  a  good  hypothesis,  and  relegate  the 
questions  you  would  ask  to  the  philosophers 
and  theologians.  But  I  am  not  one  of  those 
who  think  that  scientific  men  should  not  con- 
cern themselves  with  such  matters  ;  and  having 
gone  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  evolution  which  I 
accept  does  not  seem  to  me  to  add  any  new 
perplexity  to  theism,  and  well  knowing  that 
others  are  of  a  contrary  opinion,  I  am  bound  to 
further  explanation  and  argument. 

But  I  have  not  the  presumption  to  suppose 
that  I  can  make  any  new  contribution  to  this 
discussion  ;  and  what  I  may  suggest  must  not 
be  expected  to  cover  the  ground  widely  nor 
penetrate  it  deeply.  I  am  sure  that  you  will 
not  look  to  me  for  the  rehanclling  of  insoluble 
problems  and  inevitable  contradictions,  into 
which  the  philosophical  consideration  of  the 
relations  of  Nature  and  man  to  God  ultimately 
lands  us.  Certainly  they  are  not  peculiar  to 
evolution.  So,  in  so  for  as  we  may  fairly  refer 
any  of  its  perplexities  to  old  antinomies,  which 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  67 

can  neither  be  reconciled  nor  evaded,  the  bur- 
den will  be  off  our  shoulders.  It  might  suffice 
to  show  that  evolution  need  raise  no  other  nor 
greater  religious  or  philosophical  difficulties 
than  the  views  which  have  already  been  ac- 
cepted, and  held  to  be  not  inimical  to  religion. 

But,  indeed,  our  universal  concession  that 
Nature  is,  and  that  it  is  a  system  of  fixed  laws 
and  uniformities,  under  which  every  thing  we 
see  and  know  in  the  inorganic  universe,  and 
very  much  in  the  organic  world,  have  come  to 
be  as  they  are,  in  unbroken  sequence,  implicitly 
gives  away  the  principle  of  all  ordinary  objec- 
tion to  the  evolution  of  living  as  well  as  of  life- 
less forms,  of  species  as  well  as  of  individuals. 
It  leaves  the  matter  simply  as  one  of  fact  and 
evidence.  Indeed,  mediate  creation  is  just 
what  the  thoughtful  and  thorough  observer  of 
the  ways  of  God  in  Nature  would  expect,  and 
is  what  some  of  the  most  illustrious  of  the  phi- 
losophic saints  and  fathers  of  the  church  have 
more  or  less  believed  in. 

In  saying  that  the  doctrine  of  the  evolution 
of  species  has  taken  its  place  among  scientific 
beliefs,  I  do  not  mean  that  it  is  accepted  by 
all  living  naturalists;  for  there  are  some  who 
wholly  reject  it.     Nor  that  it  is  held  with  equal 


68  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

conviction  and  in  the  same  way  by  all  who  re- 
ceive it ;  for  some  teach  it  dogmatically,  along 
with  assumptions,  both  scientific  and  philosoph- 
ical, which  are  to  us  both  unwarranted  and 
unwelcome ;  more  accept  it,  with  various  confi- 
dence, and  in  a  tentative  way,  for  its  purely 
scientific  uses,  and  without  any  obvious  refer- 
ence to  its  ultimate  outcome ;  and  some,  look- 
ing to  its  probable  prevalence,  are  adjusting 
their  conditional  belief  in  it  to  cherished  beliefs 
of  another  order.  One  thing  is  clear,  that  the 
current  is  all  running  one  way,  and  seems 
unlikely  to  run  dry;  and  that  evolutionary 
doctrines  are  profoundly  affecting  all  natural 
science. 

Here  you  remark  that  your  objection  is  not 
so  much  to  the  idea  of  mediate  creation  as  to 
the  form  it  has  assumed ;  that  the  mediate  pro- 
duction of  species  may  indeed  be  completely 
theistic.  But  that,  whereas  their  immediate 
creation  directly  asserts  Divine  action,  their  in- 
coming under  Nature  only  implies  it.  To  those 
who  already  believe  in  a  Supreme  Being  the 
two  views  may  religiously  amount  to  the  same 
thing.  But,  you  continue,  living  beings  were 
thought  to  afford  a  kind  of  demonstration  of  a 
supernatural  creator.     Science,  in  taking   this 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  69 

away,  leaves  us  only  the  assurance  that  if  we 
bring  the  idea  of  God  to  Nature  we  may  find 
Nature  wholly  compatible  with  that  idea.  Well, 
what  is  lost  in  directness  may  perhaps  be  gained 
in  breadth  and  depth.  It  is  certain  that  the 
whole  progress  of  physical  science  tends,  in 
respect  to  Divine  action,  to  consider  that  me- 
diate, general,  and  in  a  sense  indirect,  which 
had  been  thought  to  be  immediate  and  special. 
Youth  is  ever  taught  by  instances,  manhood  by 
laws. 

You  go  on  to  say :  The  evolution  of  species 
now  so  commended  to  us  by  science,  not  long 
ago  seemed  as  improbable  to  scientific  as  to  or- 
dinary minds.  What  assurance  can  we  unscien- 
tific people  have  that  science  will  not  reverse 
its  present  judgments?  None,  perhaps,  except 
that,  while  many  particular  judgments  have 
been  reversed  or  altered,  the  general  course  of 
thought  has  run  in  one  direction.  And  theolo- 
gians, like  naturalists,  must  be  content  with  the 
best  judgments  they  can  form  upon  the  present 
showing,  and  be  ready  to  modify  them  upon 
better. 

Finally,  and  to  reach  the  present  point,  you 
pertinently  commend  to  scientific  men  their 
own  saying :  "  Science  asks  of  every  thing  how 


70  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

it  is  a  part  of  the  system  of  Nature,  of  the  chain 
of  cause  and  effect."     An  hypothesis  must  give 
the  how  and  why,  and  from  its  own  resources, 
before  it  is  worth  attending  to.     A  credible  hy- 
pothesis should  assign  real  and  known  causes, 
and  ascertain  their  actual  operation  somewhere 
before  assuming  their  operation  everywhere.    A 
complete  hypothesis  should  assign  not  only  real 
but  sufficient  causes  for   all   the   effects;    and 
when  it  assumes  them  in  invisible  and  intangi- 
ble  forms,    such   as   molecules   and   molecular 
movements,  it  is  bound  to  show  that  all  the  ob- 
served consequences  flow  from  the  assumption. 
Now  to  declare  that  species  come  through  evo- 
lution, without   either  proving   it   by   facts   or 
clearly  conceiving  the  mode  and  manner  how, 
is  only  supporting  a  thesis  which  was  until  lately 
deemed  scientifically  improbable  by  hypotheses 
of  a  kind  which  have  always  been  regarded  as 
invalid. 

Just  here  Darwinism  comes  in  with  a  modus 
operandi,  in  which  lies  all  its  essential  value.  As 
the  conception  of  the  derivation  of  one  form 
from  another  is  the  only  distinctly-pointed  alter- 
native to  specific  supernatural  creation,  so  the 
principle  of  natural  selection,  taken  in  its  fullest 
sense,  is  the  only  one  known  to  me  which  can 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  *J\ 

be  termed  a  real  cause  in  the  scientific  sense 
of  the  term.  Other  modern  hypotheses  assign 
metaphysical,  vague,  or  verbal  causes,  such 
as  development,  anticipation,  laws  of  molecular 
constitution,  without  indicating  what  the  special 
constitution  is,  —  none  of  which  have  much 
advantage  over  the  "  nisus  formatimis  "  of  earlier 
science. 

I  have  no  time  to  recapitulate  what  I  briefly 
said  of  natural  selection  in  a  former  lecture  ;  nor 
to  analyze  the  applications  of  the  principle  by 
Darwin,  Wallace,  and  others  to  critical  instances  ; 
nor  to  specify  its  limitations  and  apparent  fail- 
ures. The  discussion  or  even  the  presentation 
of  these  would  fill  the  hour,  and  divert  me  from 
my  particular  task.  Instead  of  this,  I  will  merely 
give  my  impression  of  the  present  state  of  the 
case  as  respects  the  points  now  before  us. 

You  will  remember  the  distinction  which  I 
pointed  out  between  the  principle  of  natural  se- 
lection, which  I  take  to  be  a  true  one,  and  the 
Darwinian  hypothesis  founded  on  it,  which  I  take 
to  be  to  a  considerable  extent  probable.  That 
is,  I  think  that  the  influences  and  actions  which 
the  term  "natural  selection"  stands  for,  give  a 
sufficient  scientific  explanation  of  the  way  in 
which   smaller   differences    among    plants   and 


72  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

animals  may  rise  into  greater,  varieties  into 
species.  Given  differences  and  an  internal  ten- 
dency to  differ  more,  i.e.,  given  variation  as  an 
inexhaustible  factor,  and  natural  selection  should 
suffice  for  the  preservation  and  increase  of  the 
select  few  as  a  consequence  of  the  destruction 
of  the  intermediate  many.  Surely  there  is 
nothing  either  improbable  or  irreligious  in  the 
idea  that  lines  of  individuals  or  races,  once  in 
existence,  should  be  subject  to  the  conditions 
of  Nature,  and  that  the  fittest  for  particular 
conditions  should  thereby  be  preserved.  As  to 
variation,  that  really  occurs  as  a  fact,  though  we 
know  not  how ;  and,  if  we  frame  explanations 
of  the  mode  and  get  conceptions  of  the  causes 
of  the  variation  of  living  things,  still  we  proba- 
bly shall  never  be  able  to  carry  our  knowledge 
very  much  further  back ;  for  in  each  variation 
lies  hidden  the  mydery  of  a  beginning.  We  cannot 
tell  why  offspring  should  be  like  unto  parent ; 
how  then  should  we  know  why  it  should  some- 
times be  different  ? 

So  then  Darwinism  has  real  causes  at  its  foun- 
dation, viz.,  the  fact  of  variation  and  the  inevi- 
table operation  of  natural  selection,  determining 
the  survival  only  of  the  fittest  forms  for  the 
time  and  place.     It  is  therefore  a  good  hypothe- 


\ 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  73 

sis,  so  far.  But  is  it  a  sufficient  and  a  complete 
hypothesis  ?  Does  it  furnish  scientific  explana- 
tion of  [i.e.,  assign  natural  causes  for)  the  rise 
of  living  forms  from  low  to  high,  from  simple  to 
complex,  from  protoplasm  to  simple  plant  and 
animal,  from  fish  to  flesh,  from  lower  animal  to 
higher  animal,  from  brute  to  man?  Does  it 
scientifically  account  for  the  formation  of  any 
organ,  show  that  under  given  conditions  sensi- 
tive eye-spot,  initial  hand  or  brain,  or  even  a 
different  hue  or  texture,  must  then  and  there 
be  developed  as  the  consequence  of  assignable 
conditions?  Does  it  explain  how  and  why  so 
much,  or  any,  sensitiveness,  faculty  of  response 
by  movement,  perception,  consciousness,  intel- 
lect, is  correlated  with  such  and  such  an  organ- 
ism? I  answer,  Not  at  all!  The  hypothesis 
does  none  of  these  things.  For  my  own  part  I 
can  hardly  conceive  that  any  one  should  think 
that  natural  selection  scientifically  accounts  for 
these  phenomena. 

Let  us  here  discriminate.  To  account  scien- 
tifically for  phenomena,  or  for  complex  series 
of  phenomena,  by  assigning  real  and  sufficient 
natural  causes,  is  one  thing.  To  believe  that 
the  phenomena  have  occurred  in  the  course 
of  nature,  and  have  natural  causal  connection, 


74  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

is  another.  It  is  not  natural  selection  which 
has  led  Mr.  Darwin  and  many  others  to  believe 
that  life  was  "  originally  breathed  by  the  Creator 
into  a  few  forms  or  into  one,"  and  "  that  the 
production  and  extinction  of  the  past  and  pres- 
ent inhabitants  of  the  world  has  been  clue  to 
secondary  causes ;  "  but  it  is  the  observed  fact  of 
likenesses  and  that  of  gradation  from  form  to 
form  which  suggested  the  idea  of  an  actual 
evolution  from  form  to  form  having  somehow 
taken  place.  Variation  and  natural  selection  are 
now  assigned  as  causes  or  reasons  of  the  evolu- 
tion. Variation  originates  all  the  differences. 
Natural  selection,  determining  which  forms  shall 
survive,  reduces  their  number  and  intensifies 
their  character.  But  Darwin  may  likewise 
consistently  speak  of  his  favorite  principle  as 
a  cause  of  the  evolution,  it  being  that  in  the 
absence  of  which  the  evolution  could  not  take 
effect.  A  cause  of  variation  it  certainly  is  not, 
but  it  is  a  necessary  occ'astoii  of  it,  or  of  its 
progress.  Because  without  natural  selection  to 
pave  the  way,  the  wheels  of  variation  would 
at  once  be  clogged  and  all  progress  be  ar- 
rested. Variation  provides  that  upon  which 
natural  selection  operates ;  the  operation  of 
natural  selection  makes  room  for  further  varia- 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  75 

tion,  gives  opportunity  for  variability  to  change 
its  fashions  and  display  its  novelties;  and  so 
the  two  go  on,  hand  in  hand.  But,  although 
thus  conjoined,  there  is  always  this  difference 
between  the  two,  that  natural  selection  works 
externally,  with  known  natural  agencies,  and  in 
the  light  of  common  clay ;  variation  works  in- 
ternally, in  darkness,  and  its  agencies  and  ways 
are  recondite  and  past  finding  out.  Or,  when 
we  find  out  something,  —  as  we  may  hope  to 
do,  —  we  only  resolve  a  before  unexplained 
phenomenon  into  two  factors,  one  of  them  a  now 
ascertained  natural  process,  the  other  a  some- 
thing; which  still  eludes  our  search.  But  we 
suppose  it  to  be  natural,  although  as  yet  un- 
known. Surely  we  are  not  to  suppose  that  nat- 
ural agencies  cease  just  where  we  fail  to  make 
them  out. 

To  proceed :  what  Darwinism  maintains  is 
that  variation,  which  is  the  origination  of  small 
differences,  and  species-production,  which  repre- 
sents somewhat  larger  differences,  and  genus- 
production,  which  represents  still  greater 
differences,  are  parts  of  a  series  and  differ 
only  in  degree,  and  therefore  have  common 
natural  causes  whatever  these  may  be  ;  and 
that  natural  selection  gives  a  clear  conception 


76  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION 

of  a  way  in  which  continually  or  occasionally 
arising  small  differences  may  be  added  up  into 
large  sums  in  the  course  of  time.  This  is  a 
legitimate  and  on  the  whole  a  good  working 
hypothesis.  The  questionable  point  is  whether 
the  sum  of  the  differences  can  be  obtained  from 
the  individually  small  variations  by  simple  addi- 
tion. I  very  much  doubt  it.  I  doubt  especially 
if  simple  addition  is  capable  of  congruously 
adding  up  such  different  denominations.  That 
is,  while  I  see  how  variations  of  a  given  organ 
or  structure  can  be  led  on  to  great  modification, 
I  cannot  conceive  how  non-existent  organs  come 
thus  to  be,  how  wholly  new  parts  are  initiated, 
how  any  thing  can  be  led  on  which  is  not  there 
to  be  taken  hold  of.  Nor  am  I  at  all  helped  in 
this  respect  by  being  shown  that  the  new  organs 
are  developed  little  by  little. 

The  doubt  is  not  whether  the  organs  and 
forms  were  actually  evolved  in  the  course  of 
Nature.  I  agree  with  Darwin  that  they  prob- 
ably were,  and  if  so  then  doubtless  under  nat- 
ural selection.  And  I  cannot  help  thinking  that 
Darwin  would  agree  with  me  that  the  principle 
of  natural  selection  does  not  account  for  it.  That 
is,  we  both  account  for  it  all,  only  by  assuming 
as  an  inexplicable  fact  that  variation  does  occur 


NATURAL   SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  77 

to  the  whole  extent  of  the  extreme  differences. 
All  appears  to  have  come  to  pass  in  the  course 
of  Nature,  and  therefore  under  second  causes; 
but  what  these  are,  or  how  connected  and  inter- 
fused with  first  cause,  we  know  not  now,  per- 
haps shall  never  know. 

Now  views  like  these,  when  formulated  by 
religious  instead  of  scientific  thought,  make 
more  of  Divine  providence  and  fore-ordination 
than  of  Divine  intervention ;  but  perhaps  they 
are  not  the  less  theistical  on  that  account.  Nor 
are  they  incompatible  with  "special  creative 
act,"  unless  natural  process  generally  is  incom- 
patible with  it,  —  which  no  theist  can  allow. 
No  Christian  theist  can  eliminate  the  idea  of 
Divine  intervention  any  more  than  he  can  that 
of  Divine  ordination ;  neither,  on  the  other 
hand,  can  he  agree  that  what  science  removes 
from  the  supernatural  to  the  natural  is  lost  to 
theism.  But,  the  business  of  science  is  with  the 
course  of  Nature,  not  with  interruptions  of  it, 
which  must  rest  on  their  own  special  evidence. 
Still  more,  it  is  the  business  of  science  to  ques- 
tion searchingly  all  seeming  interruptions  of  it, 
and  its  privilege,  to  refer  events  and  phenomena 
not  at  the  first  but  in  the  last  resort  to  Divine 
will. 


/ 


78  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

Moreover,  "  special  creative  act "  is  not  ex- 
cluded by  evolutionists  on  scientific  ground,  is 
not  excluded  at  all  on  principle,  except  by  those 
who  adopt  a  philosophy  which  antecedently 
rules  out  all  possibility  of  it.  Darwin  postu- 
lates one  creative  act  and  a  probability  of  more, 
and  so  in  principle  is  at  one  with  Wallace  and 
with  Dana,  who  insist  on  more. 

But  it  has  been  said,  and  indeed  is  said  over 
and  over,  even  by  thoughtful  men,  that,  al- 
though Darwinism  is  not  necessarily  atheistic, 
yet,  when  once  started  it  dispenses  with  further 
need  of  God.  "Given  [it  is  said]  the  laws 
which  we  find,  then  there  is  no  more  use  for 
God,  and  all  things  have  come  out  as  we  find 
them  with  none  of  his  supervision.  There  may 
have  been  —  we' do  not  know  —  a  God  once; 
but  law  and  not  God,  is  the  great  Creator."  A 
few  words  should  dispose  of  this.  First,  by 
what  right  is  it  assumed  that  the  Darwinian 
differs  from  the  orthodox  conception  of  law? 
In  the  next  place,  this  line  of  argument  applies 
equally  to  a  series  of  creative  acts  separated  by 
intervals,  during  which  it  could  with  the  same 
reason  (or  unreason)  be  said  that  there  is  no 
use  for  God,  that  there  may  have  been  a  God  at 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  79 

times  !  So  it  cuts  away  the  ground  from  under 
the  Christian  evolution  which  the  writer  quoted 
from  allows,  as  well  as  from  that  which  he 
deprecates.  And  it  equally  dispenses  with  use 
for  God  in  Nature  for  the  several  thousand  years 
which  have  passed  since  creation  under  the 
biblical  view  was  finished,  and  the  Creator 
"  rested  from  all  the  work  which  he  had  made." 
There  is  no  more  validity  in  the  argument  in 
the  one  case  than  in  the  others. 

A  word  or  two  upon  the  subject  of  creative 
acts  occurring  in  time  may  not  be  out  of  place. 
These,  when  spoken  of  in  the  present  connec- 
tion, do  not  usually  refer  to  the  making  of  a 
new  form  of  plant  or  animal  ins  tauter  out  of  the 
dust  of  the  ground.  However  it  might  have 
been  when  there  was  only  one  act  of  creation 
to  think  of,  the  enormous  crudeness  of  such  a 
conception  when  applied  to  a  long  succession  of 
animals  would  now  be  seriously  felt  by  every 
one.  It  is  a  phrase  most  used  by  those  who 
accept  the  idea  of  the  evolution  of  one  species 
from  another,  but  who  feel  the  utter  incom- 
petence of  known  natural  causes  to  account  for 
it.  In  the  absence  of  such  causes,  they,  being 
theists,  naturally  (and  I  cannot  say  unphilo- 
sophically)   assign   the    simpler  and   seemingly 


80  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

easier   part  of  evolution  to   recondite   natural 
causes  which  they  are  unable  to  specify,  the 
more   difficult  or  inscrutable  to  a  diviner  and 
more   direct  or   supernatural   act,  which   they 
liken  to  creation.     I  suppose  they  do  not  feel 
the  necessity,  as  they  have  not  the  ability,  to 
draw  any  definite  line  between  what  they  think 
mere   Nature  may  accomplish,  and  what  they 
believe  she  cannot.     Probably  what  they  have 
in  mind  is  mediate  creation  and  not  miracle. 
Perhaps  they  are  convinced  that  if  they  could 
behold  the  birth  of  a  species,  they  would  see 
nothing  more  miraculous  than  in  the  birth  of 
an  individual.     They  mean  that  the  springs  of 
Nature  are  somehow  touched  by  a  new  form  or 
instance  of  force   directed   to  some   new  end. 
Yet  so  they  must  be  in  a  degree  in  the  origi- 
nation of  a  new  race  or  variety.     This  whole 
conception  of  mediate  creation  is  logically  car- 
ried out  to  its  extreme  by  my  philosophical  col- 
league, Professor  Bowen,  when   he   concludes 
that  "  not  only  every  new  species  but  that  each 
individual    living    organism,    originated    in    a 
special  act  of  creation."  * 

So  the  difference  between  pure   Darwinism 

*  Korth  American  Review  for  November,  1879,  p.  463. 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  81 

and   a  more   theistically  expressed^  evolution  is 
not  so  great  as  it  seemed.     Both  agree  in  the 
opinion  that  species  are  evolved  from  species, 
and  that  evolution  somehow  occurs  in  the  course 
of  Nature.     Darwinism  opines  that  the  whole 
is  a  natural  result  of  general  causes  such  as  we 
know  of  and    in  a  degree  understand,  such  as 
we   recognize   under  the  concrete  terms  of  va- 
riability, heredity,  and  the  like,  —  terms  which 
we  can  estimate  and  limit  only  by  reference  to 
what  we  see  coming  to  pass,  —  along  with  com- 
plex physical  interactions  which  are  more  meas- 
urable   and   predictable.     The  very  much  that 
it  has  not  accounted  for  by  these  causes  and 
processes,  it  assumes  may  be  in  time  accounted 
for  by  them,  or  by  as  yet  unrecognized  general 
causes  like  them.     The  specially  theistic  evolu- 
tion referred  to  judges  that  these  general  causes 
cannot  account  for  the  whole  work,  and  that  the 
unknown  causes  are  of  a  more  special  character 
and  higher  order.     I  think  it  does  not  declare 
that  these  are  not  secondary  causes,  and  whether 
they  would  be  ranked  as  natural  causes  would 
depend  upon  the  sense  in  which  the  term  Nature 
was  at  the  moment  used.     Probably  such  evo- 
lutionists, if  they  had  to  give  form  to  their  con- 
ceptions,  would  vary  in  all   degrees   between 


82  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

the  direct  interposition  of  a  supernatural  hand 
at  certain  stages  or  crises,  and  that  extreme 
extension  of  the  Supernatural  into  and  through 
the  Natural  which  Professor  Bowen  reaches 
in  the  assertion  that  each  individual  living 
organism,  as  well  as  every  new  species,  origi- 
nated in  a  special  act  of  creation.  This,  the 
complete  assimilation  of  specific  to  individual 
origination,  is  simply  Darwinism,  expressed 
in  less  appropriate  language.  What  the  one 
calls  "  special  act"  the  other,  along  with  the 
rest  of  mankind,  calls  general  process.  The 
common  principle  of  the  Divine  ordination  of 
Nature,  which  the  philosopher  here  asserts  in  a 
paradoxical  way,  the  Darwinian  implies,  or  even 
postulates,  on  appropriate  occasions.  The  Dar- 
winian Naturalist,  I  mean,  not  the  monistic  and 
agnostic  philosopher,  —  from  whom,  so  far,  we 
have  kept  as  clear  as  has  Mr.  Darwin  in  every 
volume  and  every  line. 

Suppose  now  that  we  are  shut  up  to  Nature 
for  the  evolution  of  the  forms  of  living  things. 
As  theists,  we  are  not  debarred  from  the  sup- 
position of  supernatural  origination,  mediate  or 
immediate.  But  suppose  the  facts  suggest  and 
inferentially  warrant   the   conclusion  that  the 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION  83 

course  of  natural   history   has   been  along  an 

unbroken  line  ;  that  —  account  for  it  or  not 

the  origination  of  the  kinds  of  plants  and  ani- 
mals comes  to  stand  on  the  same  footing  as  the 
rest  of  Nature.  As  this  is  the  complete  outcome 
of  Darwinian  evolution,  it  has  to  be  met  and 
considered. 

The  inquiry,  what  attitude  should  we,  Chris- 
tian theists,  present  to  this  form  of  scientific 
belief,  should  not  be  a  difficult  one  to  answer 
In  my  opinion,  we  should  not  denounce  it  as 
atheistical,  or  as  practical  atheism,  or  as  absurd. 
Although,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  this  con- 
ception can  never  be  demonstrated,  it  can  be 
believed,  and  is  coming  to  be  largely  believed ; 
and  it  falls  in  very  well  with  doctrine  said  to 
have  been  taught  by  philosophers  and  saints, 
by  Leibnitz  and  Malebranche,  Thomas  Aquinas, 
and  Augustine.  So  it  may  possibly  even  share 
in  the  commendation  bestowed  by  the  Pope,  in  a 
recent  sensible  if  not  infallible  allocution,  upon 
the  teaching  of  "  the  Angelic  Doctor,"  and 
make  a  part  of  that  genuine  philosophy  which 
the  Pope  declares  to  stand  in  no  real  opposition 
to  religious  truth.  Seriously  it  would  be  rash 
and  wrong  for  us  to  declare  that  this  conception 
is  opposed   to  theism.     Our  idea  of  Nature  is 


84  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

that  of  an  ordered  and  fixed  system  of  forms 
and  means  working  to  ultimate  ends.  If  this  is 
our  idea  of  inorganic  nature,  shall  we  abandon 
or  depreciate  it  when  we  pass  from  mere  things 
to  organisms,  to  creatures  which  are  themselves 
both  means  and  ends  ?  Surely  it  would  be  sui- 
cidal to  do  so.  We  may,  and  indeed  we  do, 
question  gravely  whether  all  this  work  is  com- 
mitted to  Nature;  but  we  all  agree  that  much 
is  so  done,  far  more  than  was  formerly  thought 
possible;  we  cannot  pretend  to  draw  the  line 
between  what  may  be  and  what  may  not  be  so 
done,  or  what  is  and  what  is  not  so  done ;  and 
so  it  is  not  for  us  to  object  to  the  further  ex- 
tension of  the  principle  on  sufficient  evidence. 

I  trust  it  is  not  necessary  to  press  this  consid- 
eration, though  it  is  needful  to  present  it,  in 
order  to  warn  Christian  theists  from  the  folly 
of  playing  into  their  adversary's  hand,  as  is  too- 
often  done. 

But  I  am  aware  that  we  have  not  yet  reached 
the  root  of  the  difficulty.  We  are  convinced 
theists.  We  bring  our  theism  to  the  interpre- 
tation of  Nature,  and  Nature  responds  like  an 
echo  to  our  thought.  Not  always  unequivo- 
cally :  broken,  confused,  and  even  contradictory 
sounds  are  sometimes  given  back  to  us ;  yet  as 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  85 

we  listen  to  and  ponder  them,  they  mainly  har- 
monize with  our  inner  idea,  and  give  us  reason- 
able assurance  that  the  God  of  our  religion  is 
the  author  of  Nature.  But  what  of  those  — 
you  will  say  —  who  are  not  already  convinced 
of  His  existence  ?  We  thought  that  we  had  an 
independent  demonstration  of  His  existence, 
and  that  we  could  go  out  into  the  highways  of 
unbelief  and  "  compel  them  to  come  in  ;  "  that 
"  the  invisible  things  of  Him  from  the  creation 
of  the  world  were  clearly  seen,  being  under- 
stood by  the  things  that  are  made,"  "  so  that 
they  are  without  excuse."  We  could  shut  them 
up  to  the  strict  alternative  of  Divinity  or 
Chance,  writh  the  odds  incalculably  against 
Chance.  But  now  Darwinism  has  given  them 
an  excuse  and  placed  us  on  the  defensive.  Now 
w^e  have  as  much  as  we  can  do,  and  some  think 
more,  to  reshape  the  argument  in  such  wise  as 
to  harmonize  our  ineradicable  belief  in  design  ' 
with  the  fundamental  scientific  belief  of  conti- 
nuity in  nature,  now  extended  to  organic  as 
wrell  as  inorganic  forms,  to  living  beings  as  well 
as  inanimate  things.  The  field  which  we  took 
to  be  thickly  sown  with  design  seems,  under 
the  light  of  Darwinism,  to  yield  only  a  crop 
of  accidents.  Where  we  thought  to  reap  the 
golden  grain,  we  find  only  tares. 


86  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

The  outlook  is  certainly  serious,  yet  not  alto- 
gether disheartening.  Perhaps  we  cannot  now 
safely  separate  the  wheat  from  the  tares,  but 
must  let  them  grow  together  unto  the  harvest. 
Nobody  expects  in  this  world  to  ascertain  the 
limits  between  design  and  contingency.  Nobody 
expects  to  demonstrate  any  design,  except  his 
own  to  himself  by  consciousness ;  he  cannot 
really  prove  his  own  to  his  bosom  friend; 
though  his  assertion  may  give  his  friend,  and 
his  actions  may  give  his  enemy,  convincing 
reasons  for  inferring  it.  But  we  are  sure  that 
every  intellectual  being  has  designs,  that  the 
reach  and  pervasiveness  of  design  must  be  in 
proportion  to  the  wisdom ;  and  that  the  designs 
of  the  Author  of  Nature,  if  any  there  be,  must 
be  all-pervading  and  fathomless.  Yet  if  they 
be  wrought  into  a  system  of  adaptations,  some 
of  the  adaptations  themselves  may  be  such  as 
irresistibly  to  suggest  their  reason  to  our  minds. 
At  least  they  suggest  reason,  even  if  we  fail  to 
apprehend,  or  wrongly  apprehend,  the  reason. 
The  sense  that  there  is  reason  why  is  as  innate  in 
man,  as  that  there  is  cause  whereby. 

Now,  to  adopt  the  apt  words  of  Francis  New- 
man,* "  after  stripping  off  all  that  goes  beyond 

*  In  Contemporary  Review,  1S78,  p.  445,  &c. 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  87 

the  mark  of  sober  and  cautious  thought,  there 
remain  in  this  world  fitnesses  innumerable  on 
the  largest  and  the  smallest  scale,  in  which 
alike  common  sense  and  uncommon  sense  see 
design,  and  the  only  mode  of  evading  this  be- 
lief is  by  carrying  out  the  cumbrous  Epicurean 
argument  to  a  length  of  which  Epicurus  could 
not  dream.  We  cannot  prove,  we  are  told,  that 
the  eye  was  intended  to  see,  or  the  hand  to 
grasp,  or  the  fingers  to  work  delicately.  Of 
course  we  cannot.  But  what  is  the  alternative  ? 
To  believe  that  it  came  about  by  blind  chance. 
No  science  has  any  calculus  or  apparatus  to 
decide  between  the  two  theories.  Common 
sense,  not  science,  has  to  decide,  and  the  most 
accomplished  physical  student  has  in  the  deci- 
sion no  advantage  whatever  over  a  simple  but 
thoughtful  man." 

Arrangements  innumerable,  extending  through 
all  nature,  subserving  all  ends,  of  course  involve 
innumerable  contingencies.  The  theist  is  not 
expected  to  have  any  definite  idea  of  the  re- 
spective limits  of  these.  He  can  only  guess  at 
the  limits  of  intention  and  contingency  in  the 
actions  of  his  nearest  neighbor.  The  non-theist 
gains  nothing  by  eliminating  instances,  unless 
he   can  eliminate   all  design  from  the  s/stem. 


A 


G 


88  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION 

Until  he  does  this,  he  gains  nothing  by  showing 
that  particular  fitnesses  come  to  pass  little  by 
little,  and  under  natural  causes.  He  cannot 
point  to  a  time  where  there  were  no  fitnesses, 
apparent  or  latent,  and  if  he  argues  that  all 
fitnesses  were  germinal  in  the  nebulous  matter 
f  our  solar  system,  he  does  not  harm  our  case. 
The  throwing  of  design  ever  so  far  back  in  time 
does  not  harm  it,  nor  deprive  it  of  its  ever- 
present  and  ever-efficient  character.  For,  as 
has  been  acutely  said,  "  If  design  has  once 
operated  in  rerum  natura  (as  in  the  production 
of  a  first  life -germ),  how  can  it  stop  operating 
and  undesigned  formation  succeed  it  ?  It  can- 
not, and  intention  in  Nature  having  once  ex- 
isted,  the  test  of  the  amount  of  that  intention 
is  not  the  commencement  but  the  end,  not  the 
first  low  organism,  but  the  climax  and  consum- 
mation of  the  whole."  # 

I  am  not  going  to  re-argue  an  old  thesis  of 
my  own  that  Darwinism  does  not  weaken  the 
substantial  ground  of  the  argument,  as  between 
theism  and  non-theism,  for  design  in  Nature.! 

*  Mozley,  Essays,  ii.  412.  See  also  Lord  Blachford  in  The 
Nineteenth  Century,  June,  1879,  p.  1035. 

f  Darwinian  a :  Essays  and  Reviews  pertaining  to  Darwin- 
ism.    New  York,  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1876. 


\i 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  89 

I  think  it  brought  in  no  new  difficulty,  though 
it  brought  old  ones  into  prominence.  It  must 
be  reasonably  clear  to  all  who  have  taken  pains 
to  understand  the  matter  that  the  true  issue  as 
regards  design  is  not  between  Darwinism  and 
direct  Creationism,  but  between  design  and 
fortuity,  between  any  intention  or  intellectual 
cause  and  no  intention  nor  predicable  first 
cause.  It  is  really  narrowed  down  to  this,  and 
on  this  line  all  maintainers  of  the  affirmative 
may  present  an  unbroken  front.  The  holding 
of  this  line  secures  all ;  the  weakening  of  it 
in  the  attempted  defence  of  unessential  and 
now  untenable  outposts  endangers  all. 

I  have  only  to  add  a  few  observations  and 
exhortations  addressed  to  Christian  theists. 

If  intention  must  pervade  every  theistic  sys- 
tem of  Nature,  if  we  give  credit  to  Mr.  Darwin 
when  in  this  regard  he  likens  his  divergence 
from  the  orthodox  view  to  the  difference  be- 
tween general  and  particular  Providence,  is  it 
safe  to  declare  that  his  theory,  and  his  denial 
that  particular  forms  were  specially  created, 
are  practically  atheistical?  I  might  complain 
of  this  as  unfair:  it  is  more  to  my  purpose  to 
complain  of  it  as  suicidal.  It  is  in  effect  hold- 
ing a  theistic  conception  of  Nature  for  our  pri- 


90  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

vate  use,  but  acting  on  the  opposite  when  we 
would  discredit  an  unwelcome  theory.  Or  else 
it  is  trusting  so  little  to  our  own  belief  that  we 
abandon  it  as  soon  as  any  weight  is  laid  upon 
it.  As  soon  as  you  do  this,  by  conceding  that 
the  evolution  of  forms  under  natural  laws  mili- 
tates against  design  in  Nature,  you  are  at  the 
mercy  of  those  reasoners,  who,  looking  at  the 
probabilities  of  the  case  from  their  own  point 
of  view,  coolly  remark  that :  — 

"  On  the  whole,  therefore,  we  seem  entitled 
to  conclude  that,  during  such  time  as  we  have 
evidence  of,  no  intelligence  or  volition  has  been 
concerned  in  events  happening  within  the  range 
of  the  solar  system,  except  that  of  animals  liv- 
ing on  the  planets."  # 

You  may  say  that  implicit  belief  of  intention 
in  Nature  affords  an  insufficient  foundation  for 
theism.  But  you  are  not  asked  to  ground  your 
theism  upon  it,  nor  upon  the  whole  world  of 
external  phenomena. 

You  may  reiterate  that  you  cannot  believe 
that  all  these  events  have  occurred  under 
natural  laws.  Nothing  hinders  your  assuming 
what   you   need    from  the   supernatural ;    but 

*  Clifford,  Sunday  Lectures,  quoted  in  The  Spectator. 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  91 

allow  that  the  need  of  other  minds  may  not  be 
identical  with  yours. 

As  I  have  said  before,  what  you  want  is,  not 
a  system  which  may  be  adjusted  to  theism,  nor 
even  one  which  finds  its  most  reasonable  inter- 
pretation in  theism,  but  one  which  theism  only 
can  account  for.  That,  it  seems  to  me,  you 
have.  An  excellent  judge,  a  gifted  adept  in 
physical  science  and  exact  reasoning,  the  late 
Clerk-Maxwell,  is  reported  to  have  said,  not 
long  before  he  left  the  world,  that  he  had  scru- 
tinized all  the  agnostic  hypotheses  he  knew  of, 
and  found  that  they  one  and  all  needed  a  God 
to  make  them  workable. 

When  you  ask  for  more  than  this,  namely, 
for  that  which  will  compel  belief  in  a  personal 
Divine  Being,  you  ask  for  that  which  He  has 
not  been  pleased  to  provide.  Experience  proves 
that  the  opposite  hypothesis  is  possible.  Some 
rest  in  it,  but  few  I  think  on  scientific  grounds. 
The  affirmative  hypothesis  gives  us  a  workable 
conception  of  how  "the  world  of  forms  and 
means"  is  related  to  "the  world  of  worths  and 
ends."  The  negative  hypothesis  gives  no  men- 
tal or  ethical  satisfaction  whatever.  Like  the 
theory  of  the  immediate  creation  of  forms,  it 
explains  nothing. 


92  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

You  inquire,  whither  are  we  to  look  for  inde- 
pendent evidence  of  mind  and  will  "  concerned 
in  natural  events  happening  within  the  range 
of  the  solar  system."  Certainly  not  to  the  court 
of  pure  physical  science.  For  that  has  ruled  this 
case  out  of  its  jurisdiction  by  assuming  a  fixed 
dependence  of  consequent  upon  antecedent 
throughout  its  domain.  There  are  plenty  of 
phenomena  to  which  it  cannot  assign  known 
causal  antecedents ;  but  it  supplies  their  place 
at  once,  either  by  assuming  that  there  is  a  phys- 
ical antecedent  still  unguessed,  or  by  inventing 
one  in  an  hypothesis.  It  deals  in  effects  and 
causes,  and  knows  nothing  of  ends.  It  has  no 
verdict  to  render  against  our  case,  for  it  does 
not  entertain  it,  and  has  no  jurisdiction  under 
which  to  try  it.  But  its  wiser  judges  do  not 
insist  that  theirs  is  the  only  court  in  the  realm. 

We  have  not  to  go  beyond  Nature  for  a 
jurisdiction,  which  may  be  likened  to  that  of 
Equity,  since  it  enforces  specific  performance, 
and  which  adds  to  causes  and  effects  the  consid- 
eration of  ends.  Biology  takes  cognizance  of  the 
former,  like  physics,  of  which  it  is  on  one  side  a 
part,  but  also  of  ends ;  and  here  ends  (which 
mean  intention)  become  a  legitimate  scientific 
study.      The  natural   history  of  ends  becomes 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  93 

consistent  and  reasonably  intelligible  under  the 
lio-ht  of  evolution.  As  the  forms  and  kinds  rise 
gradually  out  of  that  which  was  well-nigh  form- 
less into  a  consummate  form,  so  do  biological 
ends  rise  and  assert  themselves  in  increasing 
distinctness,  variety,  and  dignity.  Vegetables 
and  animals  have  paved  the  earth  with  inten- 
tions. The  study  and  the  estimate  of  these  is 
quite  the  same,  under  whatever  view  of  the 
mode  in  which  the  structures  and  beings  that 
exemplify  them  came  to  be. 

The  highest  of  these  exemplars  is  himself 
conscious  of  ends.  He  pronounces  that  critical 
monosyllable  I.  I  am,  I  will,  I  accomplish  ends. 
I  modify  the  outcome  of  Nature.  Here,  at 
length,  is  something  "  on  the  planets  "  which 
"  has  been  concerned  in  events  ;  "  and  in  my 
opinion  it  is  just  now  a  good  and  useful  theistic 
view  which  connects  this  something  with  all  the 
lower  psychological  phenomena  that  preceded 
and  accompany  it.  Our  wills,  in  their  limited 
degree,  modify  the  course  of  Nature,  subservi- 
ent though  that  be  to  fixed  laws.  By  our  will 
we  make  these  laws  subserve  our  ends.  We 
momently  violate  the  uniformity  of  Nature. 
But  we  do  not  violate  the  law  of  the  uniformity 
of  Nature.     Is  it  not  legitimate,  is  it  not  inev- 


94  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

itable,  that  a  being  who  knows  that  he  is  a  will, 
and  a  power,  and  a  successful  contriver,  should 
explain  what  he  sees  around  and  above  him  by 
the  hypothesis  of  a  higher  and  supreme  will? 
A  will  which  has  disposed  things  in  view  of 
ends  in  establishing  Nature,  and  which  may,  it 
need  be,  dispose  to  particular  and  timed  ends, 
either  with  or  without  perceptible  suspension  of 
the  law  of  the  uniformity  of  Nature. 

The  question  I  ask  has  been  adversely  an- 
swered, substantially  as  follows  :  It  may  be  that 
in  the  first  instance  men  can  hardly  avoid  pred- 
icating a  being  who  has  done  and  is  doing  all 
this.  Nevertheless  a  trained  mind  soon  reaches 
the  incongruity  of  it,  at  least  "  as  concerns  any 
events  which  have  happened  within  the  range 
of  the  solar  system."  For  the  belief  that  a 
supernatural  power  has  so  acted  contradicts  that 
very  belief  in  the  uniformity  of  Nature  upon 
which  all  scientific  reasoning  and  practical  judg- 
ments rest. 

To  this  it  is  well  rejoined,  that  the  ultimate 
scientific  belief  on  which  our  reason  reposes  "  is 
that  belief  in  the  uniformity  of  Nature  which  is 
equivalent  to  a  belief  in  the  law  of  universal 
causation  ;  which  again  is  equivalent  to  a  belief 
that  similar  antecedents  are  always  followed  by 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  95 

similar  consequents.  But  this  belief  is  in  no 
way  inconsistent  with  a  belief  in  supernatural 
interference."  #  If  the  principle  of  the  uni- 
formity of  Nature  asserted  that  every  natural 
effect  is,  and  has  ever  been,  preceded  by  natu- 
ral causes,  then  it  would  be  in  terms  inconsistent 
with  supernatural  interference  and  with  super- 
natural origination  of  the  system.  But  science 
does  not  give  us  nor  find  any  such  principle. 
All  scientific  beliefs  "  are  in  themselves  as  true 
and  as  fully  proved  if  supernatural  interference 
be  possible  as  they  are  if  such  interference  be 
impossible.  A  law  does  no  more  than  state  that 
under  certain  circumstances  (positive  and  nega- 
tive) certain  phenomena  will  occur.  If  on  some 
occasions  these  circumstances,  owing  to  super- 
natural interference,  do  not  occur,  the  fact  that 
the  phenomena  do  not  follow  proves  nothing  as 
to  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  the  law."  #  If  such 
interference  violates  the  law  of  the  uniformity 
of  Nature,  the  human  will,  and  all  wills,  and  all 
direction  of  material  forces  to  ends,  are  every 
day  violating  it. 

It  is  also  urged  that  giving  particular  direc- 

*  Balfour  (Arthur).  A  Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt,  p. 
329.  The  note  on  the  Discrepancy  between  Religion  and  Science 
is  particularly  pertinent. 


96  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

tion  in  a  special  act  would  be  an  addition  to  the 
plenum  of  force  in  the  universe,  and  therefore  a 
contradiction  to  the  recently  acquired  scientific 
principle  of  the  conservation  of  energy.  The 
answer  may  be  this.  It  is  not  at  all  certain 
that  all  direction  given  to  force  expends  force ; 
it  is  certain  that,  under  collocations,  a  minute 
use  of  force  (as  pulling  a  hair-trigger  or  jostling 
a  valve)  may  bring  about  immense  results ; 
and,  finally,  increments  of  force  by  Divine  ac- 
tion in  time,  of  the  kind  in  question,  if  such 
there  be,  could  never  in  the  least  be  known  to 
science. 

The  only  remaining  supposition  that  I  now 
think  of  is  the  crude  one  that  thought  and 
will  are  functions  of  the  body,  secretions  as  it 
were  of  the  organ  through  which  they  are  mani- 
fested, "  psychical  modes  of  motion."  Then,  as 
has  well  been  said,  they  must  be  correlated 
with  physical  modes  of  motion,  at  least  in 
conception ;  but  it  is  conceded  by  all  sensible 
thinkers  that  thought  cannot  be  translated  into 
extension,  nor  extension  into  thought.  Now, 
since  the  only  conceivable  source  of  physical 
force  is  supernatural  power,  still  more  must  this 
be  the  only  conceivable  source  of  thought. 

There  is  an  old  objection  which  threatens  to 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  97 

undermine  the  ground  on  which  we  infer  Divine 
will  from  the  analogy  of  human ;  namely,  that 
our  wills,  being  a  part  of  the  course  of  Nature 
and   amenable  to   its   laws,   their   movements, 
though  seemingly  free,  are  as  fixed  as  physical 
sequences.  Upon  this  insoluble  problem  we  have 
nothing  practical  to  say,  except  to  admit  that  so 
much  of  choice    is  determined   by  antecedent 
conditions  and  the  surroundings,  by  hereditary 
bias,  by  what  has  been  made  for  the  individual 
and  inwrought  into  his  nature,  that,  granting  the 
will  has  an  element  of  freedom,  it  may  be  in 
effect  a  small  factor.     I  can  only  urge  that  it  is 
not  an  insignificant  factor.     As  to  this,  a  pertinent 
although  homely  suggestion  came  to  me  in  the 
remark  of  a  humble  but  shrewd   neighbor,  to 
the  effect  that  he  found  the  difference  between 
people  and  people  he  dealt  with  was  really  very 
little,  but  that  what  there  is  was  very  important. 
So  facts  and  reasonings  may  shut  us  up  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  will,  sovereign  as  it  seems 
to  the  user,  is  practically  a  small  factor  in  the 
determination  of  events.     But   what   there    is 
makes  all  the  difference  in  the  world  in  man ! 

And  now,  as  to  man  himself  in  relation  to  evo- 
lution.    I  have  no  time  left  for  the  discussion 


98  NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

of  questions  which  naturally  interest  you  more 
than  any  other,  but  which,  even  with  time  at  dis- 
posal, are  not  easy  to  treat.  I  will  not  undertake 
to  consider  what  your  attitude  should  be  upon  a 
matter  which  connects  itself  with  grave  ulterior 
considerations  ;  but  I  will  very  briefly  and  frank- 
ly intimate  what  views  I  think  a  scientific  man, 
religiously  disposed,  is  likely  to  entertain. 

To  pursue  the  illustration  just  ventured  upon  : 
The  anatomical  and  physiological  difference  be- 
tween man  and  the  higher  brutes  is  not  great 
from  a  natural-history  point  of  view,  compared 
with  the  difference  between  these  and  lower 
grades  of  animals ;  but  we  may  justly  say  that 
what  corporeal  difference  there  is  is  extremely 
important.  The  series  of  considerations  which 
suggest  evolution  up  to  man,  suggest  man's  evo- 
lution also.  We  may,  indeed,  fall  back  upon  Mr. 
Darwin's  declaration,  in  a  case  germane  to  this, 
that  "  analogy  may  be  a  deceitful  guide."  Yet 
here  it  is  the  only  guide  we  have.  If  the  alter- 
native be  the  immediate  origination  out  of 
nothing,  or  out  of  the  soil,  of  the  human  form 
with  all  its  actual  marks,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
which  side  a  scientific  man  will  take.  Mediate 
creation,  derivative  origination  will  at  once  be 
accepted ;  and  the  mooted  question  comes  to  be 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION  99 

narrowed  clown  to  this :  Can  the  corporeal  dif- 
ferences between  man  and  the  rest  of  the  animal 
kingdom  be  accounted  for  by   known   natural 
causes,  or  must  they  be  attributed  to  unknown 
causes  ?     And  shall  we  assume  these  unknown 
causes  to  be  natural  or  supernatural  ?   As  to  the 
first  question,  you  are  aware,  from  my  whole 
line  of  thought  and  argument,  that  I  know  no 
natural  process  for  the  transformation  of  a  brute 
mammal  into  a   man.     But  I  am  equally  at  a 
loss  as  respects  the  processes  through  which  any 
one  species,  any  one  variety,  gives  birth  to  an- 
other.    Yet  I  do  not  presume  to  limit  Nature  by 
my  small  knowledge  of  its  laws  and  powers.     I 
know  that  a  part  of  these  still  occult  processes 
are  in  the  every-day  course  of  Nature ;  I  am 
persuaded  that  it  is  so  through  the  animal  kino-- 
dom  generally;  I  cannot  deny  it  as  respects  the 
highest   members   of    that   kingdom.     I  allow, 
however,    that   the   superlative   importance    of 
comparatively  small  corporeal  differences  in  this 
comsummate  case  may  justify  any  one  in   re- 
garding it  as  exceptional.     In   most  respects, 
man  is  an  exceptional  creature.     If,  however,  I 
decline  to  regard  man's  origin  as  exceptional  in 
the  sense  of  directly  supernatural,  you  will  un- 
derstand that  it  is  because,  under  my  thoroughly 


100         NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

theistic  conception  of  Nature,  and  my  belief  in 
mediate  creation,  I  am  at  a  loss  to  know  what  I 
should  mean  by  the  exception.  I  do  not  allow 
myself  to  believe  that  immediate  creation  would 
make  man's  origin  more  divine.  And  I  do  not 
approve  either  the  divinity  or  the  science  of 
those  who  are  prompt  to  invoke  the  super- 
natural to  cover  our  ignorance  of  natural  causes, 
and  equally  so  to  discard  its  aid  whenever  natu- 
ral causes  are  found  sufficient.* 

It  is  probable  that  the  idea  of  mediate  crea- 
tion would  be  more  readily  received,  except  for 
a  prevalent  misconception  upon  a  point  of  ge- 
nealogy. When  the  naturalist  is  asked,  what 
and  whence  the  origin  of  man,  he  can  only  an- 
swer in  the  words  of  Quatrefages  and  Virchow, 
"  We  do  not  know  at  all."  We  have  traces  of 
his  existence  up  to  and  even  anterior  to  the 
latest  marked  climatic  change  in  our  temperate 
zone  :  but  he  was  then  perfected  man ;  and  no 
vestige  of  an  earlier  form  is  known.  The  be- 
liever  in  direct  or  special  creation  is  entitled  to 
the  ad  van  ta  ore  which  this  negative  evidence 
gives.  A  totally  unknown  ancestry  has  the 
characteristics    of   nobility.      The   evolutionist 

*  See  Baden  Powell,  On  The  Order  of  Nature,  p.  163. 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.  101 

can  give  one  satisfactory  assurance.  As  the 
wolf  in  the  fable  was  captious  in  his  complaint 
that  the  lamb  below  had  muddied  the  brook  he 
was  drinking  from,  so  those  are  mistaken  who 
suppose  that  the  simian  race  can  have  defiled 
the  stream  along  which  evolution  traces  human 
descent.  Sober  evolutionists  do  not  suppose 
that  man  has  descended  from  monkeys.  The 
stream  must  have  branched  too  early  for  that. 
The  resemblances,  which  are  the  same  in  fact 
under  any  theory,  are  supposed  to  denote  collat- 
eral relationship. 

The  psychological  differences  between  man 
and  the  higher  brute  animals  you  do  not  expect 
me  now  to  discuss.  Here,  too,  we  may  say 
that,  although  gradations  abridge  the  wide  in- 
terval, the  transcendent  character  of  the  super- 
added must  count  for  more  than  a  host  of 
lower  similarities  and  identities;  for,  surely, 
what  difference  there  is  between  the  man  and 
the  animal  in  this  respect  is  supremely  impor- 
tant. 

If  we  cannot  reasonably  solve  the  problems 
even  of  inorganic  nature  without  assuming;  ini- 
tial  causation,  and  if  we  assume  for  that  su- 
preme intelligence,  shall  we  not  more  freely 
assume  it,  and  with  all  the  directness  the  case 


102        NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

may  require,  in  the  field  where  intelligence  at 
length  develops  intelligences  ?  But  while,  on 
the  one  hand,  we  rise  in  thought  into  the  su- 
pernatural, on  the  other  we  need  not  forget 
that  one  of  the  three  old  orthodox  opinions,  — 
the  one  held  to  be  tenable  if  not  directly  favored 
by  Augustine,  and  most  accordant  to  his  the- 
ology, as  it  is  to  observation,  —  is  that  souls  as 
well  as  lives  are  propagated  in  the  order  of 
Nature.  Here  we  may  note,  in  passing,  that 
since  the  "  theologians  are  as  much  puzzled  to 
form  a  satisfactory  conception  of  the  origin  of 
each  individual  soul  as  naturalists  are  to  con- 
ceive of  the  origin  of  species,' '  and  since  the 
Darwinian  and  the  theologian  (at  least  the  Tra- 
ducian)  take  similar  courses  to  find  a  way  out 
of  their  difficulties,  they  might  have  a  little 
more  sympathy  for  each  other.  The  high  Cal- 
vinist  and  the  Darwinian  have  a  goodly  number 
of  points  in  common.* 

View  these  high  matters  as  you  will,  the  out- 
come, as  concerns  us,  of  the  vast  and  partly 
comprehensible  system,  which  under  one  aspect 
we  call  Nature,  and  under  another  Providence, 

*  See  an  article  on  Some  Analogies  between  Calvinism  and 
Darwinism,  by  Rev.  G.  F.  Wright,  in  the  Bibliotheca  Sacra, 
January,  1880. 


NATURAL    SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.        103 

and  in  part  under  another,  Creation,  is  seen  in 
the  emergence  of  a  free  and  self-determining 
personality,  which,  being  capable  of  conceiving 
it,  may  hope  for  immortality. 

"May  hope  for  immortality."  You  ask  for 
the  reasons  of  this  hope  upon  these  lines  of 
thought.  I  suppose  that  they  are  the  same  as 
your  own,  so  far  as  natural  reasons  go.  A  beino* 
who  has  the  faculty  —  however  bestowed  —  of 
reflective,  abstract  thought  superadded  to  all 
lower  psychical  faculties,  is  thereby  per  sattum 
immeasurably  exalted.  This,  and  only  this, 
brings  with  it  language  and  all  that  comes  from 
that  wonderful  instrument ;  it  carries  the  germs 
of  all  invention  and  all  improvement,  all  that 
man  does  and  may  do  in  his  rule  over  Nature 
and  his  power  of  ideally  soaring  above  it.  So 
we  may  well  deem  this  a  special  gift,  the  gift 
beyond  recall,  in  which  all  hope  is  enshrined. 
None  of  us  have  any  scientific  or  philosophi- 
cal explanation  to  offer  as  to  hoiv  it  came  to  be 
added  to  what  we  share  with  the  brutes  that 
perish  ;  but  it  puts  man  into  another  world 
than  theirs,  both  here,  and  —  with  the  aid 
of  some  evolutionary  ideas,  we  may  add — here- 
after. 


104        NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

Let  us  consider.  It  must  be  that  the  Eternal 
can  alone  impart  the  gift  of  eternal  life.  Bat 
He  alone  originates  life.  Now  what  of  that  life 
which  reaches  so  near  to  ours,  yet  misses  it 
so  completely?  The  perplexity  this  question 
raises  was  as  great  as  it  is  now  before  evolu- 
tion was  ever  heard  of;  it  has  been  turned  into 
something  much  more  trying  than  perplexity 
by  the  assurance  with  which  monistic  evolu- 
tionists press  their  answer  to  the  question ;  but 
a  better  line  of  evolutionary  doctrine  may  do 
something  toward  disposing  of  it.  It  will  not 
do  to  say  that  thought  carries  the  implication 
of  immortality.  For  our  humble  companions 
have  the  elements  of  that,  or  of  simple  ratiocina- 
tion, and  the  power  of  reproducing  conceptions 
in  memory,  and  —  what  is  even  more  to  the 
present  purpose  —  in  dreams.  Once  admit  this 
to  imply  immortality  and  you  will  be  obliged  to 
make  soul  coextensive  with  life,  as  some  have 
done,  thereby  well-nigh  crushing  the  whole  doc- 
trine of  immortality  with  the  load  laid  upon  it. 
At  least  this  is  poising  the  ponderous  pyramid 
on  its  apex,  and  the  apex  on  a  logical  fallacy. 
For  the  entire  conception  that  the  highest  brute 
animals  may  be  endowed  with  an  immortal  prin- 
ciple is  a  reflection  from  the  conception  of  such 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.        105 

a  principle  in  ourselves ;  and  so  the  farther  down 
you  carry  it,  the  wider  and  more  egregious  the 
circle  you  are  reasoning  in. 

Still,  with  all  life  goes  duality.  There  is  the 
matter,  and  there  is  the  life,  and  we  cannot  get 
one  out  of  the  other,  unless  you  define  matter 
as  something  which  works  to  ends.  As  all  agree 
that  reflective  thought  cannot  be  translated  into 
terms  of  extension  (matter  and  motion),  nor  the 
converse,  so  as  truly  it  cannot  be  translated  into 
terms  of  sensation  and  perception,  of  desire  and 
affection,  of  even  the  feeblest  vital  response 
to  external  impressions,  of  simplest  life.  The 
duality  runs  through  the  whole.  You  cannot 
reasonably  give  over  any  part  of  the  field  to  the 
monist,  and  retain  the  rest. 

Now  see  how  evolution  may  help  you  ;  —  in 
its  conception  that,  while  all  the  lower  serves 
its  purpose  for  the  time  being,  and  is  a  stage 
toward  better  and  higher,  the  lower  sooner  or 
later  perish,  the  higher,  the  consummate,  sur- 
vive. The  soul  in  its  bodily  tenement  is  the 
final  outcome  of  Nature.  May  it  not  well  be 
that  the  perfected  soul  alone  survives  the  final 
struggle  of  life,  and  indeed  "  then  chiefly  lives," 
—  because  in  it  all  worths  and  ends  inhere ; 
because  it  only  is  worth  immortality,  because 


106        NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

it  alone  carries  in  itself  the  promise  and  poten- 
tiality of  eternal  life  !  Certainly  in  it  only  is 
the  potentiality  of  religion,  or  that  which  aspires 
to  immortality. 

Here  I  should  close ;  but,  in  justice  to  myself 
and  to  you,  a  word  must  still  be  added.  You 
rightly  will  say  that,  although  theism  is  at  the 
foundation  of  religion,  the  foundation  is  of 
small  practical  value  without  the  superstruc- 
ture. Your  supreme  interest  is  Christianity; 
and  you  ask  me  if  I  maintain  that  the  doc- 
trine of  evolution  is  compatible  with  this.  I 
am  bound  to  do  so.  Yet  I  have  left  myself 
no  time  in  which  to  vindicate  my  claim ;  which 
I  should  wish  to  do  most  earnestly,  yet  very 
deferentially,  considering  where  and  to  whom 
I  speak.  Here  we  reverse  positions:  you  are 
the  professional  experts;  I  am  the  unskilled 
inquirer. 

I  accept  Christianity  on  its  own  evidence, 
which  I  am  not  here  to  specify  or  to  justify; 
and  I  am  yet  to  learn  how  physical  or  any  other 
science  conflicts  with  it  any  more  than  it  con- 
flicts with  simple  theism.  I  take  it  that  religion 
is  based  on  the  idea  of  a  Divine  Mind  revealing 
himself  to  intelligent  creatures  for  moral  ends. 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.        107 

We  shall  perhaps  agree  that  the  revelation  on 
which  our  religion  is  based  is  an  example  of 
evolution ;  that  it  has  been  developed  by  de- 
grees and  in  stages,  much  of  it  in  connection 
with  second  causes  and  human  actions;  and 
that  the  current  of  revelation  has  been  mingled 
with  the  course  of  events.  I  suppose  that  the 
Old  Testament  carried  the  earlier  revelation 
and  the  germs  of  Christianity,  as  the  apostles 
carried  the  treasures  of  the  gospel,  in  earthen 
vessels.  I  trust  it  is  reverent,  I  am  confident  it 
is  safe  and  wise,  to  consider  that  revelation  in 
its  essence  concerns  things  moral  and  spiritual ; 
and  that  the  knowledge  of  God's  character  and 
will  which  has  descended  from  the  fountain- 
head  in  the  earlier  ages  has  come  down  to  us, 
through  annalists  and  prophets  and  psalmists,  in 
a  mingled  stream,  more  or  less  tinged  or  ren- 
dered turbid  by  the  earthly  channels  through 
which  it  has  worn  its  way.  The  stream  brings 
down  precious  gold,  and  so  may  be  called  a 
golden  stream;  but  the  water  —  the  vehicle  of 
transportation  —  is  not  gold.  Moreover  the 
analogy  of  our  inquiry  into  design  in  Nature 
may  teach  us  that  we  may  be  unable  always 
accurately  to  sift  out  the  gold  from  the  earthy 
sediment. 


108        NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

But,  however  we  may  differ  in  regard  to  the 
earlier  stages  of  religious  development,  wTe  shall 
a°ree  in  this,  that  revelation  culminated,  and 
for  us  most  essentially  consists,  in  the  advent  of 
a  Divine  Person,  who,  being  made  man,  mani- 
fested the  Divine  Nature  in  union  with  the 
human ;  and  that  this  manifestation  constitutes 
Christianity. 

Having  accepted  the  doctrine  of  the  incar- 
nation, itself  the  crowning  miracle,  attendant 
miracles  are  not  obstacles  to  belief.  Their 
primary  use  must  have  been  for  those  who  wit- 
nessed them  ;  and  we  may  allow  that  the  record 
of  a  miracle  cannot  have  the  convincing  force 
of  the  miracle  itself.  But  the  very  reasons  on 
which  scientific  men  reject  miracles  for  the 
carrying  on  of  Nature  may  operate  in  favor  of 
miracles  to  attest  an  incoming  of  the  super- 
natural for  moral  ends.  At  least  they  have 
nothing  to  declare  against  them. 

If  now  you  ask  me,  What  are  the  essential 
contents  of  that  Christianity  which  is  in  my 
view  as  compatible  with  my  evolutionary  con- 
ceptions as  with  former  scientific  beliefs,  it  may 
suffice  to  answer  that  they  are  briefly  summed 
up  in  the  early  creeds  of  the  Christian  Church, 
reasonably  interpreted.     The  creeds  to  be  taken 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.         109 

into  account  are  only  two, — one  commonly  called 
the  Apostles',  the  other  the  Nicene.  The  latter 
and  larger  is  remarkable  for  its  complete  avoid- 
ance of  conflict  with  physical  science.  The 
language  in  which  its  users  "  look  for  the  resur- 
rection of  the  dead  "  bears  —  and  doubtless  at 
its  adoption  had  in  the  minds  of  at  least  some 
of  the  council  —  a  worthier  interpretation  than 
that  naturally  suggested  by  the  short  western 
creed,  namely,  the  crude  notion  of  the  revivi- 
fication of  the  human  body,  against  which  St. 
Paul  earnestly  protested. 

Moreover,  as  brethren  uniting  in  a  common 
worship,  we  may  honorably,  edifyingly,  and 
wisely  use  that  which  we  should  not  have  for- 
mulated, but  may  on  due  occasion  qualify, — 
statements,  for  instance,  dogmatically  pronounc- 
ing upon  the  essential  nature  of  the  Supreme 
Being  (of  which  nothing  can  be  known  and 
nothing  is  revealed),  instead  of  the  Divine 
manifestation.  We  may  add  more  to  our  con- 
fession :  we  all  of  us  draw  more  from  the  ex- 
haustless  revelation  of  Christ  in  the  gospels; 
but  this  should  suffice  for  the  profession  of 
Christianity.  If  you  ask,  must  we  require  that, 
I  reply  that  I  am  merely  stating  what  I  ac- 
cept.    Whoever   else  will  accept  Him  who  is 


110         NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION. 

himself  the  substance  of  Christianity,    let   him 
do  it  in  his  own  way. 

In  conclusion,  we  students  of  natural  science 
and  of  theology  have  very  similar  tasks.  Na- 
ture is  a  complex,  of  which  the  human  race 
through  investigation  is  learning  more  and  more 
the  meaning  and  the  uses.  The  Scriptures  are 
a  complex,  an  accumulation  of  a  long  series  of 
records,  which  are  to  be  well  understood  only 
by  investigation.  It  cannot  be  that  in  all  these 
years  we  have  learned  nothing  new  of  their 
meaning  and  uses  to  us,  and  have  nothing  still 
to  learn.  Nor  can  it  be  that  we  are  not  free  to 
use  what  we  learn  in  one  line  of  study  to  limit, 
correct,  or  remodel  the  ideas  which  we  obtain 
from  another. 

Gentlemen  of  the  Theological  School,  about 
to  become  ministers  of  the  gospel,  receive  this 
discourse  with  full  allowance  for  the  different 
point  of  view  from  which  we  survey  the  field. 
If  I,  in  my  solicitude  to  attract  scientific  men  to 
religion,  be  thought  to  have  minimized  the 
divergence  of  certain  scientific  from  religious 
beliefs,  I  pray  that  you  on  the  other  hand  will 
never  needlessly  exaggerate  them  ;  for  that  may 
be  more  harmful.     I  am  persuaded  that  you,  in 


NATURAL  SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION.        Ill 

your  day,  will  enjoy  the  comfort  of  a  much 
better  understanding  between  the  scientific  and 
the  religious  mind  than  has  prevailed.  Yet 
without  doubt  a  full  share  of  intellectual  and 
traditional  difficulties  will  fall  to  your  lot.  Dis- 
creetly to  deal  with  them,  as  well  for  your- 
selves as  for  those  who  may  look  to  you  for 
guidance,  rightly  to  present  sensible  and  sound 
doctrine  both  to  the  learned  and  the  ignorant, 
the  lowly  and  the  lofty-minded,  the  simple  be- 
liever and  the  astute  speculatist,  you  will  need 
all  the  knowledge  and  judgment  you  can 
acquire  from  science  and  philosophy,  and  all 
the  superior  wisdom  your  supplications  may 
draw  from  the  Infinite  Source  of  knowledge, 
wisdom,  and  grace. 


Theological  Semmary-Sp 


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